,c^. 


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FRANCE 
HERSELF   AGAIN 


BY 

ERNEST   DIMNET 


G.  p.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
Ube  Ikntclfterbocfter  press 

1914 


Copyright,  1914 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 


Ubc  Vtnickerbocfccr  prcM,  tUw  Cork 


PREFACE 

This  volume  has  been  written  in  English  for  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking public,  and  with  constant  attention  to 
the  English  point  of  view.  So  many  books  nowadays 
consist  of  articles  reprinted  under  a  title  destined  to 
give  them  some  sort  of  unity,  that  I  may  be  forgiven 
for  pointing  out  that  this  is  not  the  case  with  the 
present  work. '  Whatever  its  faults  may  be,  it  has  been 
conceived  as  a  whole  and  aims  at  offering  to  the  reader 
a  body  of  doctrine  which  will  help  him  to  understand 
the  rapid  evolution  of  France  in  the  past  ten  years, 
and  to  discriminate  between  what  is  real  progress,  and 
what  ought  to  be  regarded  as  an  accidental  relapse. 
This  could  not  be  done  without  an  analysis  seeking  the 
causes  of  both  the  progress  and  the  shortcomings  in  an 
historic  development  of  considerable  duration.  There 
may  be  an  appearance  of  austerity  in  such  a  method, 
^ut  it  is  the  only  one  that  is  repaid  by  clear  under- 
standing, and  I  feel  confident  that  the  section  of  the 
public  for  which  I  have  written  will  not  blame  me  for 
adopting  it. 

As  may  well  be  suspected,  the  greater  part  of  this 

*  Four  chapters  were  printed,  it  is  true,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 
and  After,  one  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  and  one  in  the  British  Review; 
but  they  were  intended  as  part  of  the  volume  I  was  writing.  I  am 
glad  of  this  opportunity  to  thank  the  London  editors  who  in  the  past 
ten  years  have  frequently  welcomed  my  contributions,  more  particularly 
my  highly  valued  friend  Mr.  William  Wray  Skilbeck. 

iii 


iv  Preface 

book  was  written  before  the  war  began,  and  I  was 
uncertain  at  first  whether  I  ought  not  to  defer  its 
publication  till  the  peace  was  signed.  But  I  found  on 
reading  the  proofs  that  I  did  not  feel  incHned  to  make 
a  single  alteration  of  any  importance.  In  fact,  the 
reader  will  soon  find  out  for  himself  that  the  volume 
could  not  have  been  written  without  the  danger  of  war 
which  awakened  France  in  1905,  that  the  possibility 
of  a  war  is  present  in  every  page,  and  in  fact  that  this 
possibility  and  the  effects  it  has  had  on  French  public 
opinion  is  what  gives  the  book  its  innermost  unity. 
The  last  pages,  which  were  written  while  my  ears  were 
still  full  of  the  booming  of  cannon,  are  not  by  any 
means  an  epilogue,  but  a  conclusion  in  the  truest  sense 
of  the  word. 

A  war  regarded  philosophically  is  only  important  in 
its  beginning  and  in  its  end,  in  the  way  in  which  it  is 
accepted  by  a  country  and  in  its  consequences.  The 
interval  is  the  noblest  repetition — and  Heaven  knows 
how  we  live  in  spirit  with  those  who  day  after  day  pro- 
long that  heroic  monotony — but  it  is  only  a  repetition. 
One  of  the  questions  which  this  volume  attempts  to 
answer,  viz..  What  are  the  effects  of  a  revived  warlike 
spirit  likely  to  be  on  the  French  nation?  has  been 
answered  by  the  facts  in  the  first  weeks  of  the  war;  but 
the  other  great  problem.  What  is  the  relation  between 
the  new  France  and  her  Government?  or  in  other 
terms.  Will  the  leaders  of  France  be  as  worthy  of  her 
after  the  war  as  the  magnetism  of  the  army  has  made 
them  during  the  hostilities?  will  remain,  when  the 
peace  is  signed,  exactly  what  it  is  said  to  be  in  the  third 
part  of  this  work.  It  will,  no  doubt,  be  nearer  a  favour- 
able solution  than  it  was  when  the  Radicals  wanted  a  re- 
duction of  the  military  service,  but  it  will  be  what  it  was. 


Preface  v 

The  present  volume  therefore  is  offered  to  the  public 
as  an  explanation  of  the  warlike  France  with  which  it  is 
in  such  deep  sympathy,  but  above  all  as  an  explanation 
of  modem  France  as  it  has  been  since  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century,  and  as  it  is  likely  to  appear  in 
the  coming  decades.  I  have  written  it  under  difficulties, 
but  with  the  pleasure  attending  the  expression  of  what 
patient  thought  convinces  us  to  be  the  truth,  and  with 
such  encouragement  from  my  publishers,  especially 
Mr.  Percy  Spalding  (of  London)  as  I  can  never  forget. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/franceherselfagaOOdimnrich 


CONTENTS 
PREFACE 

PAGE 

This  book  written  in  English  from  the  English  point  of  view, 
not  a  collection  of  reprinted  articles  artificially  put  to- 
gether, but  an  attempt  at  a  complete  analysis  of  the  forces 
which  have  made  contemporary  France  what  it  is — Rela- 
tion of  this  analysis  to  the  war  of  19 14.  .  .         .       iii 

INTRODUCTORY 

Difficulty  but  possibility  of  an  ex  professo  inquiry  into  the  psy- 
chology of  a  nation  and  its  historic  elements — Main  posi- 
tion: France,  since  1905,  has  become  once  more  a  nation 
and  is  no  longer  a  ground  for  experiments.        ...       I 

PART  I.     THE  DETERIORATION  OF  FRANCE 
Section    I.    Under   the   Second   Empire 

CHAP. 

1.  This  Deterioration  was  unexpected     .....         7 

2.  Danger  of  the  Personal  Ideas  of  Napoleon  the  Third      .  .         9 

3.  Even  greater  Danger  arising  from  the  Philosophy  and  Lit- 

erature of  the  Second  Empire      .     .         .         .         .         .11 

4.  Materialism         ....  ....       14 

5.  Indifference  to  the  Moral  Consequences  of  Theories      .  .       16 

6.  Humanitarianism.     Victor  Hugo.     The  Revolution  of  1848  .       19 

7.  Intellectual  Hegemony  of  Germany  gladly  accepted      .  .       22 

8.  Unwholesomeness  of  Literature.     Cynicism  underlying  the 

Formula  and  Spirit  of  Realism 25 

9.  Anti-Christianity.     Renan  and  La  Vie  de  Jesus  ...       30 

10.  Decadence  of  Morals        .......       35 

11.  End  of  the  Second  Empire.     Universal  Optimism  and  Delu- 

sions    ..........  38 

vii 


viii  Contents 


PAGl 


12.  The  Future  of  France  as  prophesied  by  Pr^vost-Paradol  as 

early  as  1 868  ........       43 

13.  The   Denouement:   the  War  of    1870,    the  Commune,  the 

Frankfort  Treaty 49 

Section  II.    Deterioration  of  France  under  the 
Second  Republic 

The    spirit  of  disorder  no  longer  embodied  in  philo- 
sophies and  poems,  but  represented  by  the  ruling  authorities      52 

CHAP. 

1.  Relation  of  this  Deterioration  to  the  RepubUcan  Institutions. 

Its  two  periods:  1 876-1 898  and  1 898-1 905  ...       52 

1876-1898 

2.  Imperfections  and  Dangers  of  the  so-called  Constitution  of 

1875.     Hegemony  of  the  Chamber  and  Effacement  of  the 
Government  ........       56 

3.  The  Chamber  an  Element  of  Division,  not  of  Union       .  .       63 

4.  The  Revanche  given  up  by  the  Republican  Party  .  .       69 

5.  The  Deterioration  of  France  emphasized  by  her  Colonial 

PoHcy 75 

6.  Imperfections  of  the  System  of  AlUances.     M.  Hanotaux  and 

M.  Delcass^.         .  .  .         .  .  .  ,  .       78 , 

7.  The  Deterioration  of  France  exemplified  in  the  Politicians 

of  the  Third  Republic:  Great  Talents  keep  away  from  Poli- 
tics    83 

8.  Anti-Clericalism  the  only  Continuous  Policy        ...  90 

9.  The  Public  Spirit:  Illusions  and  Vulgarity  ....  97 

I 898-1905 

10.  Deterioration  of  France  by  International  Socialism       .         .105 

11.  Dreyfusism:   its  PoHtical  Aspect  often  neglected  yet  All- 

important    .........     105 

12.  Combism :  Socialist  Hegemony  .  .  .  .  .  .113 

13.  Combism  and  the  Church:  Religious  Persecution  .  .118 

14.  Combism  and  Rome:  a  Short-sighted  Policy         .  .  .     122 

15.  Combism  and  the  Army   .  .  .  .126 

16.  Combism   and  Patriotism:    M.  Jaur^s   and  Germany:   M. 

Anatole  France  .         .         ,  .         .         .         -133 


Contents 


IX 


17.  Combism  and    National  Culture:    the    Levelling  Spirit   in 

Educational  Methods    .  .  .  .  .  .  -137 

18.  Blindness  of  Combism.     The  Possibility  of  War  unsuspected      143 

PART  II.     THE  RETURN  OF  THE  LIGHT 
Introductory 

The  Tangier  affair  a  flash  of  lightning.  Since  1905 
French  ideas  in  the  air  and  no  longer  internationalist 
doctrines      .  .  .         .         .  .  .  .  .151 

Section    L     Immediate    Consequences    of    the 
Tangier  Incident 


1.  Lifting  up  of  the  Veil:  Consciousness  of  the  Absurdity  of 

Internationalism  ..... 

2.  Awakening  of  the  Instincts  of  Self -Preservation 

3.  Revival  of  the  Military  Spirit 

4.  The  Chamber  Dethroned    .... 

5.  A  Craving  for  Strong  Men 

6.  Transformation  of  Newspapers:  their  Outlook  becomes  Wider 

and  more  Practical — Increased  interest  in  Foreign  Affairs    . 

7.  Rapid  Diffusion  of  a  New  Mentality,  the  outstanding  char- 

acteristics of  which  will  be  indicated  in  Section  III,  but  the 
origins  of  which  are  traced  in  the  following  chapters    . 


153 
156 
159 
163 

166 

170 


172 


Section  II.     Intellectual  Preparation  of  the  New 
Spirit  by  the  Experience  of  the  Best 


This  is  the  counterpart  of  the  preparation  for  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  decadence  of  France  traced  in  Part  I  to 
the  philosophy  and  literature  of  the  Second  Empire     .  .174 


CHAP. 

1.  Reaction    against    the    Revolution.     Influence    of    Taine. 

Hostility  to  J.  J.  Rousseau      .... 

2.  Reaction  against  Scientism.     Bankruptcy  of  Science 

3.  Reaction  against  Materialism      .... 

4.  Reaction  against  Internationalism 

5.  Success  of  Provincial  Literature.     Its  Import  and  the  Ideas 

underlying  it         .....  . 


175 
184 
186 
187 

19Q 


Contents 


PAGB 


6.  Reaction  against  Socialism,  not  only  from  Conservative  but 
from  Syndicalist  Quarters.  Significance  of  M.  G.  Sorel's 
Works         .........     193 

Section  III.    Evidences  of  the  New  Spirit 
Division  A.     Instinctive  Manifestations  of  the  New  Spirit 

CHAP. 

1.  A  Patriotic  Attitude  forced  even  on  Internationalists      .  .201 

2.  Substitution  of  a  European  for  a  Party  Point  of  View      .  .     205 

3.  Anachronism  of  so-called  Idealist  Manifestations — M.  Ana- 

tole  France  a  Living  Paradox            .          .          .          .  .211 

4.  Increased  Distrust  of  Parliamentary  Action          .          .  .213 

5.  Syndicalism  reduced  to  its  True  Proportions         .          .  -215 

6.  A  Higher  Moral  Standard  forced  on  the  Public  Spirit    .  .217 

7.  The  Stage  an  apparent  Anomaly.     Explanation  of  the  same  .     220 

8.  The  Rising  Generation — its  Manly  Characteristics        .  .     244 

9.  The  Rising  Generation — it  is  not  less  French  than  its  Pre- 

decessors— Appearances  to  the  contrary  explained      .  .     260 

10.  How  far  the  Church  is  Responsible  for  the  Transformation  of 

France — Nature  of  its  Activity — its  Influence  Analysed       .     273 

Division   B.     More    Conscious    Manifestations   of  the 
New  Spirit 

CHAP. 

1.  Return  of  French  Literature  to  its  traditional  Spirit — Failure 

of  the  Romanticists — Their  ethos  contrasted  with  that  of 
Recent  Writers — Taste  of  the  latter  for  Clarity  and  Ele- 
gance— Moral  Superiority  of  Literary  Schools  averse  to 
Crude  Realism  .......     298 

2.  The  Meaning  of  M.  Bergson's  Success:  it  is  rather  the  Success 

of  a  Method  and  a  Spirit  than  that  of  a  Philosophy      .  .325 

3.  Restoration  of  Classical  Studies;  its  significance     .  .  .     330 

Conclusion  of  Part  II 

The  French  obviously  recovering  from  dangerous  intel- 
lectual or  moral  diseases — less  individualistic  and  more 
attentive  to  the  public  welfare — more  alive  to  the  interests 
of  their  country — no  longer  afraid  of  going  to  war  if  it  is 
necessary.  The  question  is  whether  this  convalescence 
will  result  in  complete  recovery  or  in  a  relapse — nations  have 
moods — the  problem  mostly,  in  the  present  stage  of 
development,  a  political  problem      .....     334 


Contents  xi 

PART  III.     THE  POLITICAL  PROBLEMS  AND 
THE  FUTURE 

CHAP.  PAGE 

1.  The  Problem  of  the  Two  Spirits — viz.  the  partisan  spirit  of 

the  Radicals,  and  the  patriotism  represented  by  M.  Poin- 
car^  or  by  men  of  M.  Millerand's  type — Apparent  fail- 
ure of  the  latter — even  their  success  would  not  mean  the 
end  of  the  confusion — The  everlasting  danger  is  the 
presence  of  a  Chamber  which  represents  its  electors  but 
imperfectly  and  does  not  represent  France  at  all  .  -341 

2.  Is  a  Change  of  Regime  probable? — Many  believe  it  with- 

out sufficient  grounds,  yet  certain  facts  evidently  point 
that  way — Universal  expectation  of  and  longing  for  a 
Rescuer — Its  frequent  transformation  into  sympathy 
with  monarchical  constitution — Possibility  and  facility 
of  a  coup  d'etat,  yet  improbability  of  its  being  accom- 
plished by  either  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  or  Prince  Napoleon, 
or  republican  leaders — Probability  of  a  modification  or 
even  of  a  complete  remodelling  of  the  Constitution     .  .     348 

3.  Inevitability    of    the    Democratic    Progress — The    modem 

mind  almost  exclusively  interested  in  the  social  and 
moral  rise  of  the  democracy — New  conditions — Insuffi- 
ciency of  the  solution  to  the  problem  of  classes  pro- 
pounded by  Integral  Nationalism — Probability  of  the 
rise  of  the  lower  classes — Its  danger,  viz,  humanitarianism, 
with  the  consequent  disappearance  of  patriotism  .  365 

4.  A    Moral    Solution    to    the    Political    Problem — Enervating 

influence  of  the  idea  of  universal  peace,  even  of  the  notion 
of  the  instability  of  political  conditions — Superiority  of 
the  moral  point  of  view:  its  frequent  indissolubility 
from  political  issues — We  know  nothing  of  the  po- 
litical problems  of  the  future,  but  we  know  that  at 
the  present  moment  humanitarianism  is  associated  with 
inferior  tendencies,  whereas  patriotism  calls  forth  our 
best  energies — It  will  be  the  same  in  the  future  when- 
ever political  problems  are  presented  in  the  concrete  to  » 
each  individual — Necessity  of  Christianity  in  its  virile 
aspects         .........     370 

PART  IV.     CONCLUSION 

France  and  the  War  of  1914 381 

The  import  of  this  volume  plain:  the  real  weakening  of  France 
came  less  from  the  disaster  of  1870  than  from  the  literary 


xii  Contents 


success  of  enervating  ideas — Realization  of  this  fact  by 
intellectual  leaders  like  Taine  and  Renan  and  their  conver- 
sion to  order — This  change  likely  to  transform  even  the 
masses,  but  slowly — Influence  of  the  Tangier  and  Agadir 
affairs  in  1905  and  191 1:  awakened  patriotism  restores 
clear-sightedness  and  energy  to  all  classes — The  obstacle 
to  this  recovery:  the  moral  inferiority  of  the  Radicals  who 
outweigh  the  influence  even  of  President  Poincar6  and 
stand  for  pacificism  when  war  is  an  everyday  danger. — 
This  volume  written  in  view  of  this  situation:  incerti- 
tude and  anxiety 

Light  thrown  over  the  main  positions  of  this  book  by  the  war 
of  19 1 4 — The  same  week  sees  the  triumph  of  political  cor- 
ruption in  the  acquittal  of  Madame  Caillaux,  and  the 
triumph  of  pure  patriotism  in  the  response  to  the  mobili- 
zation order — Noble  characteristics  of  the  public  spirit 
— The  background  of  the  war  wholly  intellectual  and 
moral — Patience  and  discipline  of  the  nation. 

Consequences  in  the  near  future:  two  possibilities  considered 
— ^Whatever  the  issue  of  the  war  may  be,  absolute  neces- 
sity of  a  remodelling  of  the  Constitution  of  1875  to  secure 
for  France  governments  worthy  of  her  new  spirit — Eng- 
land ought  to  realize  this  necessity,  and  the  present  vol- 
ume has  been  written  largely  for  this  purpose. 

Probability  of  a  new  era  opening  for  France. 

Index 391 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN 


FRANCE  HERSELF  AGAIN 


INTRODUCTORY 

The  object  of  this  book  is  to  investigate  the  trans- 
formation of  the  pubHc  spirit  which  has  been  visible 
in  France  since  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century. 
That  there  has  been  such  a  change  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  or  doubt,  for  everybody  has  felt  it  or  heard  of  it, 
and  every  well-informed  person  who  has  a  chance 
eagerly  inquires  concerning  it. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  changes  everywhere  in 
Europe,  and  that  disquietude  and  optimism  rapidly 
succeed  each  other  in  almost  every  nation.  Modern 
peoples  are,  like  modern  towns,  in  a  condition  of 
perpetual  mutation.  Instead  of  the  deep  stillness  which 
seemed  to  hold  the  cities  of  old  spellbound,  there  pre- 
vails an  everlasting  activity  which  alarms  when  it 
bodes  destruction,  and  excites  when  it  means  recon- 
struction. What  a  change  in  the  atmosphere  of  Eng- 
land since  the  last  decade  of  the  past  century,  when 
the  author  of  this  book  thought  he  was  almost  physic- 
ally conscious  of  its  tranquillity.  Germany,  which  at 
a  distance  gives  the  impression  of  a  huge  body  full 
of  youthful  and  wonderfully  directed  life,  is  not  free 
from  multiform  anxieties.  The  visitor  who  goes  there 
under  the  impression  that  he  will  meet  with  nothing 


2  Introductory 

except  prosperity  and  the  peaceful  enjoyment  of  oppor- 
tunities is  promptly  undeceived.  Even  Italy,  optimistic 
as  her  temperament  makes  her,  and  elated  as  she  has 
often  appeared  lately,  has  to  fight  against  uneasiness 
of  mind  as  well  as  against  tangible  obstacles. 

It  is  true  also  that  if  it  is  difficult  to  satisfy  oneself 
about  the  condition  of  one  little  town,  nay,  one  family, 
the  perplexity  is  infinitely  increased  when  a  nation  is 
the  object  of  inquiry.  Day  after  day  the  observer  is 
placed  in  the  presence  of  facts  which  do  not  tally  with 
his  previous  inferences,  or  hears  people  whose  impres- 
sions are  at  variance  with  his  own,  or  unexpectedly  sees 
the  whole  political  outlook  wear  an  appearance  which 
disconcerts  his  anticipations.  Sometimes  he  feels  in- 
clined to  question  the  possibility  of  generalizing  from 
his  scanty  observations  about  a  portion  of  the  globe  of 
which  his  mental  as  well  as  his  bodily  vision  can  only 
embrace  a  depressingly  narrow  horizon;  and  he  goes 
back  to  the  popular  notion  with  which  every  one  of  us 
has  started,  that  where  millions  are  unknown  and  even 
invisible,  it  is  useless  to  speculate  as  if  unity  were  a  fact. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  the  fragmentary  character  of  past 
history  and  of  the  kaleidoscopic  nature  of  history  in  the 
making,  experience — even  the  experience  of  a  private 
citizen  with  no  means  of  information  besides  the  news- 
papers and  his  own  curiosity — teaches  us  that  com- 
munities have  an  intellectual  and  sentimental  life  Hke 
individuals,  and  that  the  phases  of  this  life  can  be  as- 
certained. We  find  in  the  long  run  that  a  collection  of 
clippings  from  the  press  enables  us  to  watch  new  facts 
and  their  consequences  without  much  surprise.  We 
gradually  become  aware  that  only  one  individual  in  a 
hundred  really  matters  as  a  subject  of  observation ;  we 
see  that  even  the  masses  are  in  many  manners  within 


Introductory  3 

our  grasp;  we  can  tell  how  quickly — I  should  say  how 
slowly — literature  and  philosophy  will  filter  down  to 
them;  and  we  see  that  several  phenomena — war  and 
the  fears  of  war,  taxation,  the  ups  and  downs  in  public 
morals — ^bear  immediately  upon  them;  we  find  that 
owing  to  new  conditions  such  as  territorial  unity,  cen- 
tralization, the  diffusion  of  the  press,  the  diffusion  of 
teaching  through  the  school,  and  of  opinion,  thanks  to 
the  passage  of  most  citizens  through  a  regiment ;  owing 
also  to  the  wider  distribution  of  riches  and  the  influence 
of  politics  over  finance — which  even  the  rudest  mind 
can  perceive — the  political  intelligence  of  what  is  going 
on  in  a  country  is  no  longer  the  privilege  of  a  few  edu- 
cated people,  and  consequently  national  reactions  are 
more  rapid.  All  this  satisfies  us  that  what  is  called  the 
life  of  a  nation  is  not  a  mere  succession  of  collective 
moods,  but  a  reciprocal  reaction  of  facts  over  ideas 
which  proper  attention  can  trace. 

I  intend  in  this  volume  chiefly  to  describe  the 
amelioration  which  the  moral  and  intellectual  condi- 
tions of  France  have  shown  with  startling  rapidity  since 
the  Tangier  incident  in  1905;  but,  as  this  improvement 
cannot  be  separated  from  its  environment,  I  shall  have 
to  preface  this  investigation  with  an  account  of  the 
previous  deterioration  of  the  country ;  and  as  the  foreign 
inquirer  seems,  very  rightly,  interested  above  all  in  its 
duration,  I  shall  conclude  by  pointing  out  how  inti- 
mately its  chances  are  bound  up  with  some  political 
problems. 

It  will  appear,  on  the  whole,  that  after  being  for 
years — ^more  than  fifty  years — almost  exclusively  a 
groimd  for  experiments,  France  wants  to  be  a  nation 
once  more.  She  is  like  a  man  whom  philosophy  or 
science,  mere  intellectual  pursuits,  have  absorbed  until 


4  Introductory 

some  great  sorrow  unexpectedly  makes  him  feel  that 
he  has  a  heart  as  well  as  a  brain,  and  has  to  live  as  well 
as  think,  or  think  in  a  way  that  will  fit  him  for  life. 
We  shall  see  this  noble  country,  distracted  and  gradu- 
ally corrupted  by  false  ideals  and  low  morals,  suddenly 
realizing  that  while  she  stayed  idle  at  home,  wasting 
the  precious  hours  in  mere  talk,  others  were  scouring  the 
world  and  gathering  power  whereby  her  independence 
appeared  to  be  threatened.  The  subject  of  this  book 
is  entirely  human ;  it  is  nothing  else  than  the  story  of  an 
error  and  of  the  awakening  from  it,  with  all  the  aston- 
ishments, hopes,  and  imcertainties  which  generally 
attend  such  crises. 


PART  I 
THE  DETERIORATION  OF  FRANCE 

SECTION  I. — UNDER  THE    SECOND  EMPIRE 
SECTION  II. — UNDER  THE  THIRD  REPUBLIC 


SECTION  I 

THE    DETERIORATION    OF   FRANCE    UNDER   THE    SECOND 

EMPIRE 

I.    It  was  Unexpected 

Shortly  after  his  accession  in  1852,  the  Emperor 
Napoleon  the  Third,  addressing  an  audience  at  Bor- 
deaux, uttered  these  remarkable  words:  "France  is 
happy,  Europe  may  live  in  peace."  Perhaps  no  speech 
could  be  found  in  the  whole  history  of  France  to  hold 
so  much  quiet  pride  and  consciousness  of  power.  This 
was  no  brag.  The  nephew  of  Napoleon  the  First  had  a 
right  to  speak  of  France  as  a  war  or  peace  maker;  the 
man  who,  himself  a  Revolutionist  once,  had  just  re- 
stored order  by  securing  more  power  than  anybody 
had  commanded  since  Louis  XIV,  was  in  a  position  to 
appreciate  the  benefit  to  Europe  of  regarding  France  as 
something  else  than  a  hotbed  of  dangerous  ideas. 

France  had  only  one  rival  in  Europe — that  was 
England.  Russia  was  still  a  far-away  semi-Asiatic 
country ;  Germany  did  not  exist,  it  was  only  a  word,  or 
at  best  an  idea,  and  Prussia,  exhausted  by  her  military 
expenses  and  still  ignorant  of  shipping  and  industrial- 
ism, was  a  byword  for  poverty;  Italy,  like  Germany, 
was  only  a  hope;  as  to  Austria,  she  was  old  and  childish, 
and  beset  with  so  many  difficulties  that  she  hardly 

7 


8  The  Deterioration  of  France 

counted.  So  France  and  England  had  the  whole  field 
to  themselves,  and  as  there  were  no  clouds,  the  new 
Emperor  expressed  only  an  actual  fact  when  he  spoke. 

To-day  the  same  sentence  would  sound  like  a  chau- 
vinist absurdity.  Certainly  it  still  belongs  to  France 
as  to  any  other  nation  to  let  war  loose  and  set  Europe 
ablaze,  but  she  has  lost  the  privilege  of  imposing  peace 
at  her  will.  The  map  and  statistics  of  Europe  have 
changed  in  the  last  sixty  years;  Germany  and  Italy  are 
no  longer  abstractions,  and  Austria  must  blame  herself 
if  she  has  lost  her  chances.  France  is  stronger  than  she 
herself  imagines;  her  geographical  position,  her  wealth, 
her  revived  military  spirit,  her  immense  diplomatic 
possibilities  if  she  would  only  see  them,  the  power 
dormant  in  her  Catholicism,  the  prestige  of  her  civiliza- 
tion and  culture,  are  unique  assets ;  but  she  is  only  one 
in  the  European  concert,  and  she  must  trust  to  the 
future,  to  the  development  of  the  good  points  in  her, 
and  of  the  weaknesses  in  her  rivals  to  regain  her  former 
position.  A  great  falling  off!  and  one  which  is  made 
more  painful  the  moment  we  cease  to  view  the  present 
situation  in  its  historic  perspective  to  advert  to  the 
sickening  details  of  everyday  politics. 

What  has  happened?  Is  it  merely  that  the  world 
has  been  moving,  and  that,  with  the  growth  of  certain 
great  forces  such  as  the  attraction  of  languages  and 
nationalities,  France  has  been  left  behind  without  any 
real  fault  of  her  own?  Asking  the  question  is  answering 
it.  Even  people  who  know  history  superficially  have  a 
feeling  more  comprehensive  than  mere  data  that  France 
has  made  havoc  with  her  own  chances ;  and  when  they 
are  asked  more  definite  questions  about  the  manner 
in  which  this  self-destruction  was  brought  about,  a 
vague  admiration  for  intellectual  daring  and  a  vague 


Political  Ideas  of  Napoleon  III  9 

dread  of  its  consequences  tell  them  that  this  country- 
lost  through  the  unwise  love  of  dangerous  ideas. 

2.     Political  Ideas  of  Napoleon  III 

It  is  surprising  that  at  least  a  medallion  of  Napoleon 
the  Third  should  not  be  seen  on  the  pedestal  of  the 
numberless  statues  erected  to  Cavour  in  almost  every 
Italian  town.  Napoleon  was  quite  as  devoted  to  the 
cause  of  Italy  as  the  great  Piedmontese.  He  had  started 
life  as  a  carbonaro,  and  the  dream  of  his  ripe  years  was 
to  see  the  Italia  Una.  This  kind  and  good  man,  who 
loved  his  country,  and  for  several  years  could  entertain 
the  delusion  that  he  had  brought  it  to  a  degree  of 
splendour  and  prosperity  unknown  even  under  his  uncle, 
was  the  predecessor  of  the  shortest-sighted  Republican 
statesmen  in  his  devotion  to  ideas  and  complete  dis- 
regard of  their  political  consequences.  It  may  be  to  his 
credit  that  he  gave  the  world  a  great  example  of 
Idealism,  but  monarchs  are  not  expected  to  be  Idealists; 
on  the  contrary,  their  subjects  look  upon  them  as  the 
representatives  of  their  interests,  and  pray  that  they 
may  never  lose  sight  of  realities.  Napoleon,  lost  in  his 
vision  of  a  noble  nation  restored  to  existence  through 
his  efforts,  did  not  see  that  he  was  preparing  a  rival  for 
France  if  the  new  nation  happened  to  be  more  practical 
than  idealistic  and  grateful.  And  when,  in  fact,  Italy 
had  become  a  reality,  he  was  imprudent  enough  to 
connect  her  interests  with  those  of  Prussia,  and,  after 
helping  Italy  into  the  world,  he  paved  the  way  for  the 
advent  of  Germany. 

His  was  a  strange  reign,  all  brilliance  to  the  super- 
ficial observer,  full  of  the  seeds  of  catastrophes  in  the 
unseen  reality.     And  it  seemed  as  if  Fortune  were 


lo  The  Deterioration  of  France 

labouring  to  hide  the  snares  under  incredible  pieces  of 
luck  and  dazzling  appearances.  The  French  armies 
would  leave  for  the  Crimea  without  knowing  where 
they  were  to  land,  without  even  a  map  of  the  shores 
they  were  seeking,  and  on  arriving  they  would  discover 
a  beautiful  bay  which  seemed  made  for  their  purpose. 
They  started  for  the  struggle  against  Austria  in  North- 
em  Italy,  a  country  full  of  rivers,  without  bothering 
about  a  pontoon- train ;  but  the  mistake  was  obviated 
on  the  spot,  and  victories  succeeded  victories  without 
any  disappointment.  The  bravery  of  officers  and  men 
was  unequalled,  and  seemed  to  do  duty  for  everything 
else.  A  hundred  thousand  men  were  killed  in  the 
Crimean  campaign,  as  many  more  in  the  everlasting 
skirmishes  of  the  Mexican  War,  but  the  country  hardly 
minded;  it  seemed  intoxicated  with  daring  and  gallan- 
try, and  took  sacrifices  light-heartedly.  It  was  the 
same  in  everything;  somewhat  gaudy  appearances  de- 
ceived in  peace  as  in  war.  Three  years  before  the 
catastrophe  of  1870,  the  Exhibition  of  1867,  the  com- 
mercial and  industrial  prosperity,  the  visits  of  sover- 
eigns, the  gigantic  rebuilding  of  Paris  by  Haussmann, 
impressed  the  country  with  the  semblance  of  grandeur, 
while  all  the  time  the  future  was  being  undermined 
by  the  most  unscrupulous  of  men  of  genius,  Bismarck, 
and  the  crisis  was  already  within  reach.  The  Emperor 
saw  the  danger.  The  last  years  of  his  reign  were 
darkened  by  the  daily  growing  Prussian  cloud,  and  his 
fears  alone  save  him  from  having  been  a  dupe  rather 
than  an  idealist;  but  this  is  a  poor  set-off  against  the 
ruin  of  one's  own  country.  Napoleon  will  remain 
responsible  for  the  great  changes  after  which  the 
European  map  showed  an  expanded  Italy  and  Germany 
and  a  shrunken  France. 


spread  of  Dangerous  Notions  1 1 

3.     Spread   of  Dangerous   Notions   under   the   Second 

Empire 

Territorial  losses  and  political  degradation  are  as 
bad  for  peoples  as  failure  and  consequent  poverty 
sometimes  are  for  individuals.  All  weakening  tends  to 
further  weakening,  and  it  is  unfortunate  for  a  nation 
to  know  that  its  voice  has  lost  influence  in  the  councils 
where  it  used  to  carry  great  weight.  The  inclination 
which  defeat  leaves  behind  is  towards  vain  agitation 
much  more  than  towards  revenge.  The  decadence  of 
nations  is  seldom  accompanied  with  struggles  against 
conquerors  or  oppressors,  but  nearly  always  with  in- 
ternal dissensions,  intrigues,  or  mere  idle  philosophizing. 
So  the  secondary  rank  to  which  the  imprudence  of 
Napoleon  III,  combined  with  the  increasing  population 
of  several  of  her  rivals,  reduced  France,  has  been,  not 
merely  a  political  falling  off.  From  the  ethical  point 
of  view,  discernible  in  the  history  of  nations  as  in  that 
of  each  of  us,  this  country  ran  considerable  risk  of  being 
a  loser,  even  if  it  had  had  no  other  germ  of  degradation 
than  its  diminished  power.  But  other  germs  did  exist 
which  were  to  develop  with  terrible  rapidity,  and  which 
will  at  present  become  the  chief  object  of  our  study. 

It  is  true  that  France  had  not  waited  till  the  time  of 
Napoleon  III  to  imbibe  those  dangerous  ideas  which 
poison  the  life  of  a  community  and  stay  in  its  veins 
long  after  they  have  ceased  to  be  frequently  expressed. 
The  ferment  of  incredulity  which  it  is  not  difficult  to  see 
in  so  much  of  the  less-known  seventeenth  century  lit- 
erature, the  theory  of  indefinite  progress  of  the  En- 
cyclopaedists, the  individualism  of  Rousseau,  had  been 
sufficiently  active  to  result  in  nothing  less  than  the 
great  Revolution.     Michelet,  Quinet,  Comte,  Cousin, 


12  The  Deterioration  of  France 

and  Jouffroy  had  become  famous  imder  the  reign  of 
Louis  Philippe. 

It  is  even  true  that,  excepting  the  most  attentive 
observers,  people  must  have  been  inchned  to  look  upon 
the  Second  Empire  as  a  more  religious  period  than  any 
since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  Roman  complication  in  the  Italian 
question  which  unexpectedly  placed  the  Imperial  Gov- 
ernment in  the  position  of  an  enemy  of  the  Papacy,  no 
regime  would  have  had  so  many  rights  to  the  title  of 
champion  of  the  Church.  The  Emperor  himself  was 
not  an  ardent  Catholic,  but  the  Empress  was,  and  the 
atmosphere  of  their  Court  was  incomparably  more 
religious  than  that  of  the  Court  of  Louis  XVI;  the 
political  order  was  based  on  belief,  and  the  clergy  were 
so  influential  that  even  now  anti-clericalism  looks  to 
those  days  much  more  than  even  to  the  Restoration  to 
find  instances  of  exaggerated  Church  interference;  the 
lycies  were  more  or  less  overtly  given  up  to  unbelievers, 
but  the  elementary  schools  were  practically  in  the 
hands  of  the  bishops,  and  official  literature  was  re- 
spectful of  dogma;  when  the  sittings  of  Parliament 
became  public,  it  appeared  that  the  immense  majority 
of  the  members  were  orthodox  and  a  great  many  of 
them  earnest  Catholics,  and  when  Sainte-Beuve,  in  his 
last  phase,  and  the  Prince  Jerome-Napoleon  attacked 
the  Church  in  the  Senate  the  scandal  was  enormous. 
To  all  intents  and  purposes  the  authorities  during  the 
Second  Empire  did  not  separate  either  perfect  civism 
or  perfect  morality  from  the  practice  of  Catholicism; 
and  anti-religious  philosophy,  literature,  or  criticism 
were  discouraged  and,  so  far  as  possible,  prevented. 

It  is  highly  probable,  therefore,  not  only  that  the 
Emperor  was  in  no  wise  responsible  for  the  deeply 


Spread  of  Dangerous  Notions  13 

anti-Christian  intellectual  conditions  I  shall  presently 
describe,  but  was  even  hardly  aware  of  them.  He  sur- 
vived the  War  of  1870  by  three  years,  and  from  his 
place  of  exile  at  Chislehurst  he  could  follow  the  ad- 
mirable work  of  political  regeneration  which  Thiers  and 
the  National  Assembly  carried  on.  He  saw  France 
diminished  through  his  fault,  but  he  also  saw  that  the 
coimtry  had  never  seemed  more  energetic,  more  sin- 
cerely religious,  more  appreciative  of  the  moral  element 
in  its  own  life  than  it  was  during  those  first  few  and  un- 
fortunately very  brief  years.  No  doubt  he  must  have 
thought  that  if  France  had  lost  something  of  her  terri- 
tory, her  brain  and  heart  were  sound,  and  he  must  have 
died  hoping  that  his  error  would  soon  be  made  good 
owing  to  the  rare  mental  conditions  which  his  govern- 
ment had  done  so  much  to  create. 

Yet  it  cannot  be  questioned  that  the  sceptical, 
pessimistic,  nihilistic  generations  which  we  shall  see 
leading  France  from  bad  to  worse  during  the  first 
thirty-five  years  of  the  Republic,  the  generations  which 
gladly  gave  up  living  to  dedicate  themselves  to  idle 
thinking  when  they  were  educated,  to  low  quarrelling 
when  they  were  not,  and  completely  forgot  that  their 
country  was  something  else  and  something  better  than 
the  place  where  they  talked,  strutted,  enjoyed  them- 
selves, or  intrigued,  are  the  offspring  of  the  Second 
Empire.  The  spirit  which  Bourget  in  his  early  years 
felt  in  himself  and  deplored  in  others,  properly  analysed 
and  traced  to  its  causes  will  lead  everybody — as  it  has 
this  writer — back  to  philosophers,  poets,  novelists,  or 
dramatists  who  flourished  under  Napoleon  IH,  and  to 
whose  noxiousness  their  successors  added  but  little. 
The  chief  characteristics  of  this  spirit  will  be  pointed 
out  in  the  following  chapters. 


14  The  Deterioration  of  France 

4.    Materialism 

The  theory  of  materialism,  which,  even  to-day,  in 
spite  of  the  success  of  Bergson,  is  all  the  philosophy 
of  so  many  semi-educated  people,  from  the  village 
schoolmaster  to  the  coimtry  doctor,  belongs  essentially 
to  the  Second  Empire.  It  was  taught  in  its  crudity  at 
the  Paris  Medical  School,  while  men  of  the  distinction 
of  Littre  and  Taine  gave  it  the  coherence,  elegance, 
and  even  austerity  of  a  philosophical  doctrine.  It  was 
a  blending  of  Spinoza's  and  Haeckel's  monistic  me- 
chanism with  the  sensationalism  of  Condillac  (rather 
than  of  John  Stuart  Mill),  and  Darwin's  discovery 
acted  as  a  confirmatur. 

Its  success,  with  the  help  of  some  scandal,  was  almost 
immediate  and  very  rapid.  Taine  taught  this  doctrine 
with  remarkable  power  because  the  effort  of  his  whole 
life  had  been  centred  upon  it,  and  he  defended  it  with 
fascinating  eloquence'  because  the  imconvincing  and 
possibly  hypocritical  spiritualism  of  Cousin  roused  his 
irony  and  indignation.  It  promptly  became  the  back- 
ground of  the  thought — if  not  of  the  teaching — of 
many  young  professors  in  the  lyceeSy  and  it  was  very 
fortunate  when  a  dash  of  Kantian  moralism  gave  it  the 
appearance  of  a  faith.  Littre  and  Taine  were  men 
whom  even  their  most  indignant  opponents  could  only 
respect — the  first  saints  latques  canonized  by  a  few 
thoughtful  disciples ;  but  a  system,  the  legitimate  trans- 
lation of  which  is,  in  popular  language,  "There  is  neither 
soul,  nor  free  will,  nor  God,  the  world  is  nothing  else 
than  matter  and  motion,"  is  not  conducive  to  sanctity. 

It  resulted  in  the  Stoic  pessimism  of  Taine  himself  or 
Guyau  wherever  there  was  elevation  enough  to  make 

»Vide  Les  Philosophes  frangais. 


Materialism  15 

stoicism  the  alternative  for  epicurism;  but  even  the 
refinement  of  Renan  did  not  save  him  from  a  few  utter- 
ances which  to-day  are  regarded  as  vulgarity  with  the 
thinnest  literary  halo;  and  among  people  who  were 
neither  poor  enough  nor  clean  enough  to  escape  from 
the  lowering  logicalness  of  such  premises,  the  conse- 
quences were  deplorable.  In  an  admirable  book  which 
I  shall  have  an  occasion  to  quote  more  fully,  La  France 
Nouvelle,  published  in  1868,  Prevost-Paradol  said  that 
the  last  barrier  between  France  and  practical,  and  no 
longer  speculative,  materialism  was  honour,  and  it  was 
easy  to  infer  from  his  tone  that  he  regarded  it  as  a  poor 
defence  against  strong  if  inferior  suggestions. 

Naturalism  was  the  literary  offspring  of  Taine*s 
philosophy.  He  had  said  himself  that  in  a  chain  of 
innumerable  causes  and  effects  there  were  some  links 
which,  properly  chosen,  studied,  and  described,  were  so 
representative  as  to  enable  us  to  dispense  with  con- 
sideration of  the  rest,  and  this  method  became  almost 
immediately  that  of  the  Goncourt  brothers  and  of 
Zola,  whose  note-books  are  strikingly  similar  to  those  of 
Taine.  He  had  also  said  that  analysis  of  passionate 
conditions  in  man  was  sure  to  reveal  the  gorilla  hidden 
under  superficial  appearances,  and  in  his  Opinions  de 
M.  Thomas  Graindorge  the  idea  had  been  plentifully  but 
decently  illustrated.  Under  coarser  pens  the  descrip- 
tion of  modern  life  soon  became  a  record  of  turpitude 
and  ferocity. 

Taine  was  not  a  saint;  he  was  only  a  noble  nature 
with  a  devotion  to  work  amounting  to  heroism,  and, 
although  his  erudition,  coupled  with  his  logic,  some- 
times resembles  genius,  he  is  not  always  intelligent. 
He  never  seemed  to  dislike  Naturalism  as  a  literary 
theory.    His  essay  on  Dickens,  along  with  a  himdred 


i6  The  Deterioration  of  France 

others,  shows  it  somewhat  ludicrously.  It  is  ridiculous 
to  see  this  wizened  old  savant  taking  up  the  cudgels 
against  the  English  novelist  for  a  kind  of  love  which, 
whatever  it  may  be,  is  confessedly  not  legitimate  love, 
and  for  brutality  of  descriptions.  The  severe  expe- 
riences of  1870  and  1 87 1  were  necessary  to  bring  Taine 
to  the  correction  of  some  of  his  ideas,  and  when  he  was 
preparing  the  two  volumes  on  Intelligence  he  was  as 
remote  as  possible  from  letting  mere  contingencies 
enter  into  his  consideration.  His  philosophy  was  made 
more  outspoken  and  fearless  by  another  trait  v^hich 
belongs  to  his  contemporaries  as  well  as  to  himself: 
the  serene  indifference  to  the  moral  consequences  of 
theories. 

5.    Indifference  to  the  Moral  Consequences  of  Theories 

Taine  once  expressed  in  very  clear  terms  his  attitude 
as  a  thinker: 

I  have  two  selves  [he  said],  one  who  eats,  drinks,  goes 
about  his  business,  does  his  best  not  to  be  harmful,  and  tries 
to  be  useful.  This  one  I  leave  at  my  threshold  when  I  come 
home.  Whether  or  not,  he  has  opinions,  a  moral  life,  a  hat 
and  gloves  like  those  of  the  public,  belongs  to  the  public. 
My  other  self,  the  one  whom  I  let  philosophize,  knows 
nothing  of  the  public.  He  has  no  idea  that  practical  effects 
can  be  deduced  from  the  truth.  .  .  . 

"Aren't  you  a  married  man?"  Reid  will  ask  him. — 
*'Not  at  all.  You  mean  the  other  man,  the  one  I  left 
outside  the  door.*' — "Aren't  you  afraid  of  making 
Revolutionists  of  the  French?"  Royer-Collard  asks  in 
his  turn. — "What  do  I  care?  Are  there  any  people 
called  French?" 


Indifference  to  Moral  Results  17 

This  means  that  a  man  who  wants  to  get  at  the  truth 
must  think  of  nothing  but  the  truth,  and  is  sure  to  be 
hindered  in  his  search  if  he  lets  any  contingency  inter- 
fere with  the  absolute.  Taine  was  so  sure  of  the  unim- 
peachableness  of  his  position  that  when  in  1889,  twenty 
years  after  the  war  which  had  changed  his  outlook  in  so 
many  points,  Bourget  pubHshed  Le  Disciple,  he  was 
deeply  perturbed.  Bourget  sets  forth  in  his  novel  the 
moral  responsibility  of  the  writer,  and  Taine,  seeing  the 
immense  success  of  the  book,  inferred  that  the  views 
of  the  rising  generation  were  at  complete  variance  with 
his  own,  and  that  he  had  had  his  day.  He  resigned  him- 
self to  what  he  thought  was  inevitable,  but  his  funda- 
mental belief  was  not  shaken,  and  he  went  on  with  his 
work  in  patient  perseverance  without  once  asking 
himself,  as  Emily  Bronte  did  about  such  a  creation  as 
Heathcliff,  whether  the  philosopher,  who  is  in  duty 
bound  to  seek  the  truth  without  any  foreign  considera- 
tions, has  the  right  to  submit  to  an  unprepared  crowd 
all  that  he  looks  upon  as  the  truth. 

Renan's  attitude  was  somewhat  different,  but  it 
resulted  in  the  same  effects.  Taine  said  everything 
out  of  sincerity,  and  the  habit  gave  his  expression  an 
austerity  which  is  more  impressive  than  winsome. 
Renan  was  a  metaphysician.  The  discovery  of  the 
truth  did  not  appear  to  him  as  something  moral,  some- 
thing on  which  other  men  have  a  claim.  It  was  the 
fortunate  encounter  of  the  intelligence  with  light  in  the 
eternal  fields.  Like  most  men  converted  from  Christ- 
ianity by  what  the  apologetics  of  those  days  called,  in 
a  dangerous  formula,  divergences  between  the  Bible 
and  Science,  Renan  had  been  very  much  impressed 
by  the  extension  which  his  scientific  data  gave  to  the 
life  of  the  world.    The  earth  had  not  received  its  first 


i8  The  Deterioration  of  France 

inhabitant  some  six  or  seven  thousand  years  before  our 
times,  and  its  duration  was  not  to  be  limited  by  cal- 
culations made  from  prophecies  in  Revelations.  Pop- 
ular belief  in  the  milieus  in  which  Renan  had  grown  up 
would  have  it  that  as  soon  as  the  Gospel  had  been 
announced  in  every  country,  the  end  would  come.  The 
reigns  of  a  dozen  popes  at  most  separated  us  from  the 
Day  of  Doom.  When  this  catastrophe  should  come, 
neither  the  thoughts  of  men,  nor  the  map  of  the  world 
would  be  very  different  from  what  they  were  at  present ; 
it  was  absurd  to  imagine  a  vast  philosophical  or  es- 
pecially theological  development  within  such  a  short 
period. 

Against  this  idea,  archaeology  and  philology  placed 
another  more  in  harmony  with  the  infinity  of  space 
revealed  by  astronomy.  Man  was  lost  in  the  infinity  of 
space,  but  he  was  lost  also  in  the  boundlessness  of  time. 
The  world  was  not  recent,  it  was  amazingly  old:  man 
had  not  been  on  earth  for  a  few  but  for  countless 
millenniums;  his  career  was  not  to  be  cut  short  in  six 
or  seven  generations — ^it  was  to  go  on  until  the  sun 
cooled  or  the  atmosphere  became  deadly.  Many  times 
before  the  end  should  come  would  the  face  of  the  earth  be 
modified,  empires  rise  and  fall,  nations  be  exterminated, 
civilizations  and  languages  be  replaced.  What,  then, 
was  the  use  of  bringing  immaterial  details  into  the 
consideration  of  the  infinite?  What  was  patriotism, 
the  instinct  of  one  short  hour  in  the  life  of  the  globe,  to 
the  soaring  of  the  mind  after  the  eternal?  Only  rude 
intellects  could  be  satisfied  with  crawling  along  the  sur- 
face of  this  poor  planet;  as  to  Renan,  he  repeated  that 
nothing  mattered  but  what  appeared  important  as 
seen  from  Sirius. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  lofty  philosophy  of  such 


Humanitarianism  19 

notions  should  appear  distinguished  to  numberless 
minds  unequal  to  their  perfect  comprehension,  and  no 
less  inevitable  that  their  popular  translation  should  be : 
if  God  and  free  will  are  empty  words,  patriotism  is  even 
more  empty. 

6.    Humanitarianism 

What  Taine  and  Renan  saw  through  the  cold  light 
of  philosophy,  others  of  a  more  poetic  bent  had  seen 
before  them  in  the  glow  of  sentiment.  The  humanitar- 
ian propagandism  of  Lamennais,  Lamartine,  Hugo, 
Michelet  and  Quinet,  and  George  Sand,  which  the 
author  of  VAvenir  de  la  Science  and  the  author  of 
U Intelligence  no  doubt  despised  as  mawkish  literature, 
was  only  a  reading  of  history  which  the  least  effort 
would  transpose  into  metaphysics. 

It  seems  strange  at  first  sight  that  the  Romanticists, 
who  had  all  of  them  begun  life  as  Catholics  and  Royal- 
ists, should  have  become  Democrats  and  Humanita- 
rians. And  it  is  strange  also  that  the  transformation 
should  have  been  brought  about  by  a  patriotic  feeling; 
yet  so  it  was.  The  Restoration  had  been  welcomed 
enthusiastically  by  Chateaubriand,  Lamartine,  Lamen- 
nais, and  Hugo  because  it  was  full  of  promises;  but 
when  the  promises  were  seen  to  remain  promises,  and 
when  the  reigns  of  Louis  XVIII,  Charles  X,  and  Louis 
Philippe  succeeded  one  another,  without  bringing  any- 
thing more  than  peace — several  times  bought  at  the 
cost  of  national  dignity — the  great  memories  of  the 
First  Empire  and  the  Revolutionary  Wars  appeared  in 
glory,  while  the  kings  descended  from  the  high  throne 
which  imagination  and  the  doctrine  of  Divine  Right  had 
erected   for   them.      Meanwhile   Socialism   fotmd   ex- 


20  The  Deterioration  of  France 

ponents  of  intellectual  power  and  moral  dignity  never 
equalled  since,  and  the  notion  of  the  people,  the  poor 
blinded  giant  whom  both  his  misery  and  his  virtues 
made  sacred,  became  as  popular  as  he  had  been  in 
Revolutionary  days.  Michelet  was  his  historian,  Hugo 
his  bard,  and  Lamennais  became  more  and  more  his 
prophet,  while  the  brilliant  Lamartine  managed  to  be 
his  orator  and  statesman. 

For  years  this  love  of  the  humble  and  ignorant 
was  coloured  with  the  atmosphere  of  the  Gospel. 
Jesus  was  the  Friend  of  all  the  suffering,  and  references 
to  His  words  were  frequent  in  poem  and  address.  It 
was,  according  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity  as  well  as 
to  that  of  the  Revolution,  that  as  all  men  were  brothers, 
all  nations  should  be  regarded  as  sisters.  There  ought 
to  be  no  fratricidal  contests  between  them,  no  jealousy 
about  worldly  possessions.  One  day  certainly  would 
come  when,  through  the  agency  of  the  first  among  them 
that  had  proclaimed  the  Rights  of  Man  and  universal 
Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity,  they  would  be  tmited 
in  perfect  goodwill  and  oneness  of  object. 

The  Revolution  of  1848  was  the  triumph  of  this 
Christian  Humanitarianism.  It  seemed  as  if  Socialism 
had  only  to  begin  rebuilding.  The  clergy  were  all 
Democrats  and  Republicans;  everywhere  the  trees  of 
liberty,  the  emblem  of  the  new  order,  were  planted  by 
the  parish  priests  outside  their  churches,  and  Louis 
Blanc  preached  through  numberless  interpreters  in 
practically  every  pulpit.  This  great  dream  of  liberty 
allied  to  the  Gospel  had  only  the  duration  of  a  dream. 
A  terrified  bourgeois  reaction  soon  set  in;  Louis  Bona- 
parte was  its  agent,  and,  as  he  was  openly  the  champion 
of  the  Church,  the  clergy  followed  him.  In  less  than 
three  years,  the  Socialists  and  Humanitarians  found 


Humanitarianism  21 

themselves  deserted  and  alone,  often  exiled  from  France, 
and  the  alliance  between  them  and  the  Church  was  at 
an  end.  Lamennais  had  only  to  go  on  vaticinating  as  he 
had  done  for  years;  but  Michelet,  who  had  loved  the 
simple  religion  of  the  mediaeval  man,  turned  against  it, 
and  devoted  the  rest  of  his  Hfe  to  praise  of  the  Revolu- 
tion and  worship  of  Nature;  while  Victor  Hugo  gave 
vent  in  Dieu,  le  Pape,  VAne,  la  Fin  de  Satan  to  the 
turgid  anti-clericalism  which  made  him  appear  and  be 
named  the  Pope  of  Democracy.  So,  through  no  posi- 
tive fault  of  its  own,  Humanitarianism  lost  its  Christian 
appearance  and  one  great  element  of  order  and  whole- 
someness. 

There  remained  another:  its  undoubted  patriotism. 
Michelet  and  Hugo  were  convinced  to  the  last,  as 
Joseph  de  Maistre  had  been  before  them,  though  for 
different  reasons,  that  France  had  a  providential  mis- 
sion which  she  alone  could  fulfil  in  the  world.  But  such 
an  idea  can  only  be  popular  so  long  as  appearances 
support  it.  Let  any  disaster  belie  it,  and  the  notion 
which  in  poets  can  survive  and  even  acquire  a  new 
strength  will  strike  the  humble  in  their  broken  spirit 
as  a  ridiculous  farce.  This  is  what  happened  in  France. 
When,  in  1870,  power  and  eclat  seemed  to  pass  over  to 
Germany,  the  bright  vision  of  France  as  an  apostle  of 
liberty  to  the  world,  and  of  Paris  as  the  Jerusalem  of  the 
Revolution,  vanished.  The  Democrats  found  them- 
selves mostly  anti-Christians  and  Internationalists, 
and  of  the  creed  of  Humanitarianism  only  vague 
formulae  subsisted,  upon  which  unscrupulous  politicians 
shamelessly  lived  until  the  advent  of  Syndicalism.  The 
fraternity  of  peoples  is  synonymous  with  horror  of  war, 
and  in  times  when  the  ideal  is  feeble  and  material  crav- 
ings are  strong,  horror  of  war  and  death  can  easily 


22  The  Deterioration  of  France 

become  the  cowardice  which,  dressed  up  by  its  superior 
representatives  into  some  sort  of  philosophy,  is  pre- 
cisely what  the  Syndicalist  Georges  Sorel  calls  the 
"philosophy  of  the  belly.**  Humanitarianism  was,  of 
course,  far  from  this  under  the  Second  Empire;  but  it 
only  waited  for  occasions  to  be  transformed  from  a 
dream  into  the  unmanly  timorousness  which  we  shall 
have  to  point  out  as  a  character  of  the  Third  Republic. 

7.    Intellecttml  Hegemony  of  Germany 

A  long  time  before  Germany  actually  existed  on  the 
map  as  an  empire,  she  existed  as  a  civilization,  and  for 
that  civilization  nobody  had  more  respect  than  the 
enlightened  French  under  the  Second  Empire.  Half  a 
century  earlier  Madame  de  Stael  had  initiated,  with  her 
book  De  VAllemagne,  not  only  a  great  literary  move- 
ment, but  an  affectionate  feeling  which  had  constantly 
taken  strength  as  it  went.  Germany  was  seen  in  a 
poetic  light  as  the  home  of  legend,  of  song,  and  of 
serene  wisdom.  Prussia,  of  course,  was  military,  but, 
since  Frederic  the  Great,  it  was  regarded  as  a  warrior 
in  the  service  of  philosophy,  and,  being  a  secondary 
power,  one  which  played  no  part  in  congresses,  it 
frightened  nobody.  So  the  notion  of  its  guns  and  press- 
gangs  and  everlasting  drilling  did  not  interfere  with  the 
idea  one  formed  of  Germany  as  an  ancient  and  peaceful 
land  with  something  maternal  in  its  name.  Michelet, 
who  hated  England  because  of  her  treatment  of  Na- 
poleon, thought  and  spoke  fondly  of  Germany  on  every 
occasion;  Quinet,  who,  however,  protested  as  early  as 
1852  against  what  he  called  Teutomania,  was  a  dis- 
ciple of  Herder,  and  mirrored  the  German  point  of 
view  in  many  passages  of  his  books;  Taine  and  Renan 


Hegemony  of  Germany  23 

were  disciples  of  Hegel,  and  the  latter  owed  all  his 
Biblical  foundation  to  the  Tubingen  School;  a  great 
many  Protestants,  French,  and  Swiss,  studied  in  Ger- 
many; and  Strasbourg,  with  its  Faculty  of  Theology 
and  its  celebrated  Revue,  was  a  sort  of  neutral  spot 
where  German  thought  was  dressed  in  the  French 
language. 

So  Germany  caused  no  alarm  as  a  neighbour,  and 
was  an  object  of  great  reverence  as  the  country  in  the 
whole  world  where  ideas  reigned  the  most  exclusively, 
and  where  philosophy  and  criticism  enjoyed  the  great- 
est liberty.  The  idea  of  dangers  arising  from  too  much 
freedom  of  speculation  did  not  occur  to  anybody. 
Germany,  with  her  thousands  of  thinkers,  produced 
patriots;  she  did  not  produce  one  Revolutionist.  The 
intellectual  light  she  radiated  could  not  but  combine 
in  a  most  happy  manner  with  the  passion  for  Hberty 
inborn  in  the  French. 

It  seems  almost  incredible  nowadays  that  this  partial- 
ity for  Germany  was  shared  by  many  people  with  whom 
mere  scientific  considerations  counted  little.  French 
society,  the  brilliant  "world"  of  i860,  doted  on  the 
German  and  especially  the  Prussian  aristocracy.  The 
latter  were  constant  visitors  to  Paris  and  Biarritz,  while 
the  French  year  after  year  met  them  at  Baden;  the 
Regent  of  Prussia,  who  was  to  become  the  first  German 
Emperor,  was  welcomed  at  Compiegne  as  a  Wagner 
hero,  and  no  diplomat  was  more  popular  than  Bismarck 
at  a  time  when  diplomats  were  universal  favourites. 
Prussian  politics  were  not  watched,  as  no  foreign 
politics  were  the  object  of  much  attention  in  those  days, 
and  sympathy  with  the  diplomats  did  not  go  beyond 
admiration  for  their  manners  and  their  linguistic  abili- 
ties; but  everybody  wished  Prussia  well,  hoped  she 


24  The  Deterioration  of  France 

would  supplant  Austria  in  the  German  confederacy, 
felt  as  the  Emperor  that  the  very  irregularity  of  her 
geographical  outlines  was  a  pity,  and  probably  was  in- 
clined, with  M.  de  Persigny,  to  advise  the  Prussian 
statesmen  to  keep  their  army  in  constant  readiness. 
About,  who,  however,  was  a  wide-awake  person,  printed 
in  i860  that  he  longed  to  see  a  Germany  of  thirty-two 
million  people  near  our  eastern  frontier,  and  nobody 
thought  him  foolish. 

Meanwhile  Bismarck  was  playing  his  game  with  an 
intelligence  which  would  be  frightening  if  the  lack  of 
intelligence  of  most  of  his  dupes  were  not  ridiculous, 
the  unity  of  the  German  lands  was  prepared  by  mil- 
itary agreements  between  the  German  sovereigns,  the 
Prussian  army  was  in  as  good  a  condition  as  any 
Persigny  might  desire,  and  the  war  which  was  to 
push  France  out  of  the  first  rank  was  only  a  question 
of  opportunity. 

When  the  war  did  come,  when  that  same  Prussia 
which  had  been  supposed  to  be  the  representative  of 
warlike  elegance  and  of  metaphysical  genius  suddenly 
appeared  to  its  bewildered  admirers  as  the  incarnation 
of  brute  force,  the  most  extraordinary  delusion  of  which 
a  nation  ever  was  the  victim  was  dispelled,  no  doubt, 
but  something  remained:  the  frightened  attraction 
which  makes  Lady  Anne  become  Gloucester's  wife  in 
Richard  III.  The  nervous  attention  to  German 
methods,  the  long  imitation  of  them  years  after 
1870,  the  abdication  of  some  well-known  profes- 
sors at  the  Sorbonne  to  the  ideas  and  even  the 
hobbies  of  German  scholars,  above  all,  the  haunting 
terror  of  another  war  as  unexpected  as  the  first,  were 
all  bequests  of  a  state  of  mind  created  under  the  Second 
Empire. 


Unwholesomeness  of  Literature         25 

8.     Unwholesomeness  of  Literature 

Literature  is  the  vehicle  of  philosophy.  The  intel- 
lectual tendencies  we  have  noticed  so  far  show  a  grow- 
ing attention  to  ideas  in  themselves  and  a  growing 
contempt  for  their  moral  consequences,  the  considera- 
tion of  which  is  looked  upon  as  a  prejudice.  We  shall 
now  see  the  same  indifference  to  the  ethical  point  of 
view  in  the  literature  of  the  Second  Empire.  None 
could  be  further  away  from  the  really  national  and 
essentially  patriotic  expression  which  literature  appears 
fundamentally  to  be.  Writers  of  poetry  or  fiction  are 
inclined  to  be  cold  and  rigid;  their  attitude  towards 
beauty  is  very  much  the  same  as  that  of  Taine  towards 
truth;  there  is  no  charity,  no  brotherly  feeling  in  it. 
The  anxiety  to  elevate  one's  contemporaries,  so  visible 
in  the  great  classics  of  all  countries,  is  absent  here.  So 
long  as  the  craving  of  the  artist  for  perfect  expression 
is  satisfied,  he  is  content. 

The  Parnassian  school,  when  Sainte-Beuve  founded 
it  without  thinking  of  giving  it  a  name,  was  a  reaction 
against  the  Romanticist  bombast.  The  young  poet 
wanted  to  be  simple,  intimate,  and  penetrating,  while 
the  others  aimed  at  continuous  sublimity — that  was 
all.  His  successors  were  very  different.  Philosophy 
had  taken  a  step  when  they  began  to  write.  The 
optimistic  hope  of  better  things  which  both  the  exalta- 
tion and  the  melancholy  of  the  Romanticists  revealed 
had  made  way  for  the  utter  darkness  of  Evolution. 
Science,  which  promised  all  sorts  of  wonderful  im- 
provements here  below,  could  not  conceal  that  it  had 
no  promise  whatever  for  the  life  to  come ;  in  fact,  there 
was  no  life  to  come,  and  the  wisest  course  was  to  sub- 
mit to  the  prospect.     So  Leconte  de  Lisle  and  his 


26  The  Deterioration  of  France 

numerous  imitators  were  pessimistic  and  often  un- 
utterably sad.  What  was  their  sole  comfort,  the  one 
solace  of  their  sunless  lives?  The  pleasure  they  took 
in  beautiful  forms:  at  first  the  chiselled  finish  of  the 
Pohomes  Barbares,  and  gradually  the  marble-like 
achievements  of  De  Heredia  in  Les  Trophies.  There 
were  no  dreams,  no  songs,  no  happiness  of  any  kind 
there,  but  every  word  in  these  frigid  performances  was 
final.  Such  a  poetry  can  never  be  popular,  and  the 
Parnassians  were  not.  While  the  world  around  them 
was  prosperous,  pleasure-loving,  and  careless,  they 
were  gloomy  and  supercilious;  the  consequence  was 
that  the  Second  Empire,  though  it  saw  the  birth  of  a 
great  deal  of  verse,  knew  no  poetry ;  it  was  left  to  itself, 
and  the  only  literature  it  enjoyed  was  fiction  or  dramas 
made  to  suit  its  tastes. 

The  formula  Fart  pour  Varty  which  the  Goncourt 
brothers  made  popular,  was  an  appropriate  expression 
for  the  attitude  of  the  Parnassians  as  well  as  for  their 
own ;  but  it  connoted  something  which  the  Parnassians 
had  not  felt  in  the  same  degree  as  themselves,  viz.,  the 
sympathy  with,  and  imitation  of  the  ways,  speech,  and 
manners  of,  the  painters  and  sculptors.  They  had 
been,  like  Theophile  Gautier,  pupils  of  painters,  and 
they  had  more  reasons  than  many  of  their  copyists  to 
retain  something  of  their  early  environment.  The  idea 
of  the  literary  man  in  the  two  classical  ages  had  had 
nothing  whatever  in  common  with  that  of  the  superior 
artisans  who  were  gradually  to  be  called  artists.  They 
never  mingled,  never  courted  one  another's  approval, 
and  did  not  suspect  that  a  day  would  come  when  their 
ideals,  critical  principles,  and  often  their  technical  cant 
might  become  the  same.  Diderot  was  probably  the 
first  literary  man  whom  circumstances  as  well  as  in- 


Unwholesomeness  of  Literature         27 

clination  brought  into  frequent  contact  with  painters, 
and  he  bears  the  mark  of  his  intercourse  with  them. 
But  he  seems  to  have  been  alone  of  his  kind  at  the 
time.  Writers  were  still,  or  aimed  at  being,  men  of 
the  world  with  social  experience  and  knowledge,  whose 
only  distinction  was  to  use  a  pen  more  skilfully  than 
mere  society  people. 

Between  such  men  and  the  set  in  which  Gautier  and 
the  Goncourts  played  off  their  familiarity  with  the 
world  of  artists  there  was  a  gulf.  Devotion  to  art  meant 
in  i860  something  esoteric  and  difficult,  a  divine  elec- 
tion which  gave  the  happy  possessors  of  the  gift  a  right 
not  only  to  speak  and  judge  but  to  live  differently  from 
the  uninteresting  crowd  of  Philistines  outside.  The 
evils  of  such  a  conception  were  numerous  and  various. 
It  falsified  the  language  of  literature  by  substituting 
for  it  another  which  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  applies  to 
style  or  thought  only  superficially.  It  created  the 
fallacy  that  the  possession  of  a  slang  indicates  a  keen 
instinct  or  definite  ideas.  It  exaggerated  the  confidence 
of  artists  and  technicians,  and  while  it  unfortunately 
intimidated  a  few  outsiders,  it  no  less  unfortunately 
planted  in  many  others  a  desire  to  look  like  those 
brilliant  Bohemians.  A  great  deal  of  the  insincerity 
nowadays  rampant  among  literary  or  would-be  literary 
people  owes  its  origin  to  childish  ambitions  bom  in  those 
days.  And  this  was  a  lesser  evil ;  the  superstition  of  the 
superiority  of  art — that  is  to  say,  the  superiority  of 
Doing  or  Appearing  over  Being — enticed  countless 
people  who  might  have  been  useful  citizens  away  from 
the  peaceful  tenor  of  their  careers  and  made  mere 
pretenders  of  them. 

Pretence  and  imitation  are  the  faults  of  the  few 
people  who  are  born  with  ambitions  but  with  insufficient 


28  The  Deterioration  of  France 

gifts,  and  one  may  imagine  that  they  did  not  spread  to 
the  mass  of  the  pubhc.  It  may  be  so,  and  it  may  also  be 
that  pretence  and  insincerity  are  more  contagious  than 
one  is  apt  to  suppose.  But  the  chief  characteristic  of 
the  literature  of  the  Second  Empire  was  one  which  did 
not  appeal  to  the  few  but  to  the  many,  and  in  a  subtle 
unavowed  manner  which  is  the  most  effective  of  all. 
What  is,  in  fact,  the  essence  of  that  great  literary 
doctrine,  Realism,  which  the  talent  of  Flaubert,  forced 
upon  all  the  writers  of  his  day?  It  has  been  defined  in 
numberless  formulae,  some  of  which  have  been  made 
to  look  as  distinguished  as  the  noblest  definitions  of 
Idealism.  But,  in  fact,  it  is  a  strong  resolve  on  the 
part  of  the  artist  to  treat  as  an  artistic  matter  all  that  is 
part  of  man  and  life.  People  often  quote  that  charming 
and  to-day  quaint  definition  of  a  romance  by  some 
Goethean  heroine:  "A  book  with  characters  one  would 
be  glad  to  resemble."  It  was  at  the  bottom  of  most 
literary  conceptions,  but  the  idea  was  suddenly  re- 
versed. A  writer  could  not  set  about  describing  all, 
without  an  impulse  to  dwell  on  what  had  been  so  far 
concealed,  so  that  realistic  novels  were  from  the  first — 
from  the  appearance  of  Madame  Bovary — the  descrip- 
tion of  sentiments  and  actions  which,  so  far,  had  been 
the  very  opposite  of  such  as  moved  to  imitation. 

The  effects  of  this  kind  of  literature  are  best  under- 
stood to-day,  less  on  account  of  historical  investiga- 
tions into  them  than  from  a  comparison  with  the  moral 
atmosphere  produced  at  the  present  day  by  a  totally 
different  style.  I  shall,  in  the  course  of  this  book,  have 
to  mention  a  return  of  some  young  writers  to  the  high 
plane  of  psychology  worthy  of  the  name,  the  descrip- 
tion of  noble  soul  struggles.  We  feel,  on  opening  these 
books,  that  underlying  the  narrative  is  a  conception 


Unwholesomeness  of  Literature         29 

of  life  which  compels  us  at  once  to  take  sides  with  the 
good  against  the  evil.  The  very  rhythm  of  the  sen- 
tences informs  us  that  easy-going  indulgence  is  not  in 
keeping  with  the  mood  we  are  expected  to  enter,  and 
our  pleasure  is  constantly  mixed  with  something  more 
austere  than  pleasure,  and  yet  persuasive. 

Exactly  the  reverse  must  have  been  the  impression 
produced  on  the  first  readers  of  Flaubert  and  the 
Goncourts :  realism  places  you  on  a  low  plane.  Nobody 
is  expected  to  be  especially  attentive  to  his  manners  in 
an  inferior  society,  and  when  the  realistic  novel  does 
not  introduce  us  to  undesirable  company,  it  at  least 
makes  us  familiar  with  that  part  of  ourselves  of  which 
we  are  the  least  proud.  If  we  take  pleasure  in  it,  this 
pleasure  will  be  a  sort  of  confession,  the  admission  that 
whatever  may  be  the  weaknesses  or  uglinesses  of  our 
nature,  we  think  them  quite  as  capable  of  being  made 
interesting  as  our  nobler  sides.  With  a  Flaubert  the 
idea,  of  course,  can  be  entirely  artistic  and  consequently 
defensible;  but  how  many  readers  have  enough  of  the 
artist  in  them  to  counterbalance  a  despicable  sort  of 
indulgence?  Certain  it  is  at  any  rate  that  what  the 
Second  Empire  called  its  sincerity  prepared,  if  it  did 
not  give  rise  at  once  to,  the  cynicism  of  the  Third 
Republic,  and  that  kind  of  sincerity  was  begotten  of 
the  outspoken  realistic  novel. 

On  the  whole,  the  indifference  to  moral  consequences 
of  the  philosophers,  the  heartlessness  of  the  Parnassians, 
the  contempt  for  the  poor  inartistic  man  familiar  to  the 
school  of  the  Goncourts,  and  the  indifference  to  the 
matter  of  art  of  the  Realists,  were  the  same  feeling  in 
various  guises;  they  all  showed  a  serene  certainty  that 
the  intelligence  of  man  can  take  its  pleasure  in  itself 
irrespective  of  any  effects  upon  life.     Such  resolute 


30  The  Deterioration  of  France 

intellectualism  means  a  narrowing  of  the  human  out- 
look, though  it  may  appear  to  be  highly  philosophical, 
and  it  also  means  the  acceptation  of  a  restricted  in- 
fluence. It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  while  the 
French  as  individuals  sacrificed  the  will  to  the  intellect 
and  activity  to  contemplation,  France  as  a  nation  was 
preparing  her  own  decadence  and  the  rise  of  her 
enemies. 

9.    Anti-Christianity 

The  literary  and  philosophical  tendencies  which  I 
have  just  reviewed  went  far  to  create  a  contempt  for 
humble,  workaday  activity,  and  an  exaggerated  esteem 
for  life  in  an  ivory  tower,  as  the  phrase  used  to  go,  but 
they  were  negative  rather  than  positively  scandalous, 
and  often  made  their  way  unsuspected.  Meanwhile, 
the  orderly  appearance  of  affairs,  remained  the  same; 
the  Government  supported  religion  and  morals  in  all 
their  manifestations,  Catholicism  was  practically  a 
State  doctrine,  and  public  education — excepting  in  the 
lycSeSy  where  the  spirit  invariably  killed  the  letter — was 
based  upon  it. 

It  was  the  doom  of  the  Second  Empire  that  its 
appearances  constantly  belied  its  realities.  While  the 
Emperor  showed  evident  reverence  for  CathoHcism, 
and  the  Empress — a  Spaniard  by  birth — was  an  ardent 
believer,  while  the  Senate  and  Chamber  and  all  the 
public  bodies  consisted  largely  of  practising  Catholics, 
while  the  religious  processions  in  Paris  and  in  all  the 
chief  towns  were  solemn  functions  attended  by  the 
army  and  at  which  most  officials  were  anxious  to  be 
seen,  Christianity  had  terrible  enemies  whose  every 
effort  was  directed  against  it. 


Anti-Christianity  31 

The  present  Radicals,  who  are  generally  the  sons 
of  the  Free  Thinkers  of  those  days,  will  have  it  that  the 
fight  with  Catholicism  ought  to  be  called  anti-clerical- 
ism and  not  anti-Christianity.  If  the  bishops,  they  say, 
had  not  been  as  influential  in  civic  affairs  as  the  pre- 
fects, if  the  parish  priests  had  not  controlled  the  village 
mayor  and  the  village  schoolmaster,  they  would  have 
been  let  alone,  and  there  would  have  been  no  religious 
persecution  in  France. 

This  is  partly  true.  The  paradox  which  gave  too 
much  power  to  the  clergy  in  a  country  not  passionately 
religious  was  certain  to  result  in  rebellion.  But  the 
anti-clerical  pretence  was  only  a  help  for  a  deep  anti- 
Christian  feeling  which  would  have  been  active  in  any 
case,  and  was  then  violent,  and  by  no  means  scientific. 
Nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  survival  in  cne 
country,  or  even  in  one  milieu ^  of  mental  conditions  long 
vanished  in  another  country  or  in  different  surround- 
ings. The  religious  views  of  the  French  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  ought  in  no  case  to  be 
compared  with  those  prevalent  in  Germany  at  the  same 
period,  and  which  we  shall  presently  see  Renan  try  to 
make  popular.  The  speculative  freedom  which  had 
reigned  in  the  Protestant  universities  for  more  than  a 
hundred  years,  when  Renan  became  acquainted  with  it, 
had  shocked  but  few  people,  and  it  had  gradually  sub- 
sided into  the  serenity  which  let  pass  unchallenged  even 
the  wildest  theological  hypotheses. 

The  situation  was  very  different  in  France.  Here 
there  was  little  question  of  the  higher  criticism  or  of 
scientific  investigations  into  the  origins  of  religious 
feeling;  Voltairianism  might  be  on  the  eve  of  its  wane, 
but  it  was  still  supreme,  and  only  its  tone  had  under- 
gone a  change.    There  were  still  the  witty  unbelievers 


32  The  Deterioration  of  France 

who  dressed  up  Lucretius  or  Celsus  in  epigrammatic 
modern  French,  the  numberless  journalists  or  lycee 
professors  who  took  their  cue  from  Paul-Louis  Courier, 
Stendhal,  Merimee,  About,  or  their  imitators,  but 
oftener  this  eighteenth-century  levity  had  been  dis- 
placed by  the  violence  bequeathed  to  the  new  genera- 
tions by  the  Revolutionists.  Michelet  and  Quinet  were 
historians  and  intelligent,  but  they  were  violent;  Pa- 
trice Larroque,  who  compiled  a  laborious  Encyclopaedia 
of  well-worn  objections  against  Christianity,  was  vio- 
lent; so  were  the  writers  on  the  staff  of  Le  Steele,  and 
so  were  the  editors  of  the  many  reimpressions  of  Le 
Testament  du  Cure  Meslier,  a  breviary  of  unbelief  which 
Voltaire  had  pruned  of  its  worst  provincialisms  but  had 
left  full  of  its  gall. 

Beside  this  turbid  stream  of  opposition  coming  from 
anywhere  and  swollen  anyhow,  the  dispassionate  dis. 
cussion  of  men  like  Jouffroy  or  Comte  had  but  little 
influence.  It  was  far  beyond  the  reach  not  only  of  the 
people  but  of  the  bourgeois,  and  yet,  unknown  as  it 
remained  in  its  real  import,  it  acteid  on  imaginations 
and  helped  the  belief  that  the  best  intellects  were  rid 
of  religious  dogmas. 

It  seems  strange  to  us  after  fifty  years  that  Sainte- 
Beuve,  the  smooth  writer,  the  man  of  universal  sym- 
pathies, the  apparently  reverent  historian  of  Port 
Royal,  should  have  been  a  rabid  and  occasionally  a 
coarse  anti-clerical,  but  so  he  appeared  in  several  of  his 
political  addresses  and  in  his  conversation.  He  was  as 
much  two  men  in  this  respect  as  Anatole  France,  who  is 
a  living  contradiction.  Taine  often  shows  violence  in 
the  early  portions  of  his  correspondence,  when  medita- 
tion had  not  blunted  the  edge  of  his  Ecole  Normale 
spirit.     But  what  is  more  incredible  than  all  the  rest  is 


Anti-Christianity  33 

that  Renan,  the  very  name  of  whom  is  synonymous 
with  tolerance  and  abhorrence  of  partisanship,  was 
bitter  and  impatient  in  his  first  articles,  and  appealed 
to  the  public  of  the  decade  beginning  in  i860  in  a 
manner  which  history  alone  can  make  anything  but 
inconceivable  to  us. 

What  is  the  Vie  de  Jesus  to  our  contemporaries? 
The  first  book  which  made  it  possible  for  them  to  be 
free  from  the  central  belief  of  the  Church,  without 
making  them  narrowly  sectarian  or  irreligious,  it  was 
the  first  appearance  in  this  country  of  incredulousness 
without  harshness,  of  science  without  pugnaciousness. 
It  seenied  as  if  Voltaire,  before  being  reincarnated  in 
Renan,  had  been  converted  by  Chateaubriand,  and 
had  then  been  vouchsafed  more  intelligence  of  Christ- 
ianity than  either  Voltaire  or  Chateaubriand  had  ever 
possessed.  The  Vie  de  Jesus  appears  as  a  sort  of  com- 
promise which  put  an  end  both  to  a  naive  sort  of  faith 
and  to  a  crude  sort  of  criticism.  The  book  has  long 
ceased  to  be  discussed;  it  is  superannuated  in  almost 
every  part,  and  yet  people  do  not  conclude,  as  they 
would  have  done  fifty  years  ago,  that  Renan  was  an 
amateur  who  borrowed  from  the  Germans  and  dis- 
guised his  incompetence  under  a  veil  of  literature. 
The  limits,  but  also  the  extent,  of  Renan's  erudition 
are  well  known,  and  a  famous  ecclesiastical  historian 
who  is  a  good  judge  of  learning,  Monseigneur  Duchesne, 
was  not  afraid  to  say  that  his  chief  book  could  not  have 
been  written  without  Les  Origines  du  Christianisme, 
The  reproach  which  is  now  attached  to  Renan  is  not 
one  of  inadequateness ;  it  is  rather  moral.  Renan 
gradually  became  too  much  of  a  dilettante  to  appear  as 
a  likely  appreciator  of  religion.  Even  his  reverent  atti- 
tude is  criticized.    It  has  been  said  of  Chateaubriand 


34  The  Deterioration  of  France 

that  he  was  the  loving  grave-digger  of  Catholicism; 
Renan  leaves  the  impression  of  a  grave-digger  who  had 
been  a  party  to  the  murder  of  the  man  he  was  burying, 
and,  for  all  his  decency,  felt  rather  guilty. 

Completely  different  was  the  background  in  1863. 
To  the  crowd  which  began  to  assault  the  Catholic 
Church  in  France,  religion  had  been  presented  as  a 
dupery,  and  dogma  as  an  opposition  to  science.  Renan 
was  one  of  the  few  brave  men  who  did  not  fear,  in  spite 
of  the  Government,  to  say  what  they  had  to  say  about 
religion,  its  origins,  and  what  was  called  its  deforma- 
tions. He  was  not  a  philosopher  made  popular  by  being 
also  an  artist — he  was  a  soldier,  and  the  atmosphere 
about  him  was  the  atmosphere  of  a  fight.  What  the 
public  saw  in  the  publication  of  the  Vie  de  Jesus  was  an 
act  of  defiance.  The  historian  had  just  been  appointed 
to  a  chair  at  the  College  de  France.  He  spoke  in  his 
inaugural  lecture  of  Jesus  as  an  "incomparable  man.'* 
These  words  brought  about  a  storm  of  protests,  and 
eventually  the  Professor's  dismissal,  but  they  also 
were  regarded  as  the  challenge  of  Free  Thought  to  the 
Church  and  taken  up  as  a  password.  As  a  consequence 
the  Vie  de  Jesus,  which  is  only  the  development  of  these 
two  words,  was  misapprehended  by  thousands  of  its 
so-called  admirers  and  applauded  as  a  blasphemy, 
instead  of  being,  as  it  is  to-day,  held  unpleasantly 
cautious  and  crafty. 

Renan  must  have  suffered  from  being  pressed  into 
the  service  of  overheated  politicians,  and  being  praised 
by  people  who  would  repeat  Jaclard's  speech:  Be 
atheists  first,  and  then  you  can  be  revolutionists.  Two 
years  after  the  publication  of  the  Vie  de  Jesus  narrow 
anti-Catholicism  appeared  in  the  foundation  of  the 
Solidaires,  who  thought  it  a  remarkable  bravado  to 


Decadence  of  Morals  35 

insist  on  being  buried  without  a  priest,  and  of  the  Ligue 
de  r Enseignementj  the  first  step  towards  atheistic  teach- 
ing in  the  elementary  schools.  This  was  the  beginning 
of  the  fight  against  the  Church  which  was  to  fill  most  of 
the  history  of  the  Third  RepubUc.  In  this  fight  Renan 
took  no  further  active  part,  and  superficial  observers 
were  tempted  to  look  upon  him  as  rather  a  friend  than 
a  foe  of  religion,  but  the  Vie  de  Jesus  gradually  began 
to  be  read  in  the  spirit  of  its  author,  and  this  spirit 
proved  to  be  even  more  destructive  than  bare-faced 
opposition.  The  brilliant  butterflies  in  Parisian  society 
were  only  too  inclined  to  adopt  a  view  of  religion  which 
turned  respect  merely  into  a  sort  of  elegance,  and  this 
first  initiation  intd  Renanism  prepared  them  for  its 
developments.  When  the  French  are  uncertain  about 
their  religious  views  they  are  too  often  uncertain  about 
all  the  rest,  and  Renan  in  his  latter  phases  taught  them 
nothing  but  uncertainty.  So  whether  irreligion  meant 
violence  and  revolution,  or  scepticism  and  tolerance,  it 
was  calculated  to  divide  and  weaken.  In  fact,  division 
and  enervation  soon  made  their  appearance,  and  the 
catastrophe  of  1870  was  not  enough  to  bring  back  union 
and  energy.  The  Third  Republic  only  developed  the 
germs  planted  imder  the  Empire. 

10.    Decadence  of  Morals 

The  combination  of  the  appearance  of  dangerous 
theories  with  the  disappearance  of  the  most  powerful 
moral  break — that  is  to  say,  belief — is  sure  to  result  in 
a  moral  falling  off.  This  was  not  evident  from  the 
first  under  the  Second  Empire,  because  the  authorities 
remained  loyal  to  principles  and  there  was  no  display 
of  licentiousness.    Compared  to  what  we  have  seen  in 


36  The  Deterioration  of  France 

the  past  twenty  years,  the  so-called  immorality  of  the 
Empire  strikes  us  as  severe  restraint.  The  stage  in 
the  days  of  Labiche,  Halevy,  and  Meilhac  was  innocent, 
and  would  appear  tame  to-day  in  the  most  puritanic 
countries;  society,  in  spite  of  its  wild  craving  after 
pleasure,  tolerated  no  indecency;  the  nude  at  the 
Salons  was  rare  and  artistic,  and,  in  spite  of  this,  fre- 
quently blamed.  There  were  still  a  great  many  families 
in  which  austere  traditions  were  kept  up;  the  feverish 
excitement,  the  endemic  dissipation  of  1865,  left  them 
as  untouched  as  the  ideas  of  the  Encyclopaedists  left 
imtouched  the  homes  of  our  great-great-grandfathers. 
In  a  word,  the  appearances  were  universally  good. 

Unfortunately  appearances  make  a  poor  defence 
against  deep-rooted  realities,  especially  when  the  public 
institutions  do  not  help  in  counteracting  them.  Philo- 
sophy was  weakening,  poetry  had  no  elevating  virtue  in 
it,  fiction  was  the  vindication  of  lawlessness;  it  was 
impossible  that  morals  should  remain  high  very  long. 
But  there  were  other  elements  of  corruption  in  the 
economic  conditions.  It  was  Guizot  who  had  said: 
*'Make  money,  enrich  yourselves";  but  the  advice  was 
too  vague  in  the  days  of  Louis  Philippe,  and  the  lower 
classes  still  remember  this  reign  as  a  time  of  penury. 
The  industrial  prosperity  of  France  dates  from  Na- 
poleon III.  Of  course  the  machines  and  the  facility  of 
imports  were  responsible  for  it, — no  sovereign  can  have 
any  more  influence  on  these  conditions  than  on  the 
weather — but  Napoleon's  turn  of  mind  was  favourable 
to  a  great  commercial  development.  His  humanitarian 
views  made  for  peace  and  for  peaceful  transactions ;  the 
very  wars  to  which  his  philosophy — much  more  than 
a  military  propensity — compelled  him,  show  that  his 
tendency  was  to  seek  the  greatness  of  France  in  some- 


Decadence  of  Morals  37 

thing  different  from  mere  territorial  expansion,  in  the 
diffusion  of  influence  through  ideas  and  improved  ma- 
terial conditions ;  the  resolute  orderliness  of  his  govern- 
ment during  its  first  eight  or  ten  years,  along  with  a 
love  of  the  humble  which  appeared  in  excellent  social 
laws,  made  industrial  unrest  almost  impossible.  All 
these  conditions  enabled  the  French  to  make  the  most 
of  their  has  de  laine,  just  at  the  moment  when  a  small 
capital  found  unique  opportunities. 

It  may  be  that  at  the  time  of  Colbert,  or  in  the  early 
days  of  Huguenot  prosperity,  the  changes  brought 
about  by  a  sudden  influx  of  wealth  would  have  been 
made  less  intoxicating,  thanks  to  the  prevalent  severity 
of  manners;  but  the  Second  Empire  was  a  time  of 
childish  levity,  and  the  example  of  imrestrained  enjoy- 
ment of  money  came  from  the  very  highest  ranks  of 
society.  The  Court  thought  of  nothing  except  amuse- 
ment and  display,  and  the  numberless  nouveaux  riches 
whom  finance  or  industry  pushed  every  day  to  the  fore- 
front had  all  the  naive  vanity  of  their  class.  The  con- 
sequence was  an  irritating  display  of  luxury  on  all  sides, 
and  a  universal  emulation  in  acquiring  the  means  of 
shining,  with  the  inevitable  unscrupulousness  arising 
under  such  circumstances.  Money  became  the  sole 
object  in  the  ever-increasing  forgetfulness  of  the  happi- 
ness which  can  be  obtained  upon  a  modicum  of  money ; 
the  country  was  deserted  for  the  towns,  especially 
Paris,  which,  in  its  new  and  occasionally  vulgar  de- 
velopment, was  a  symbol  and  an  appeal;  and  the  scourge 
invariably  attending  the  development  of  a  nation  in 
the  direction  of  material  ease — depopulation — made  its 
appearance. 

Yet  the  Second  Empire  cannot  be  described  as  an 
epoch  of  widely-spread  corruption.     Immorality  still 


38  The  Deterioration  of  France 

revolted,  and  several  famous  judicial  cases  prove  it. 
It  was  rather  a  period  of  bubbling  insouciance,  with  a 
light-hearted  acceptance  of  an  inferior  moral  standard 
which  seemed  inevitable  for  the  time  being,  and  which 
people  were  as  remote  from  advocating  as  from  re- 
nouncing. The  cynicism  of  conscious  deterioration — the 
almost  inseparable  companion  of  Malthusianism — was 
to  come  later.  But  all  the  germs  of  this  degradation  had 
been  sown  broadcast  long  before  1870,  and  hundreds 
of  moralists  had  pointed  out  their  dissemination. 

1 1 .     The  End  of  the  Empire 

The  Second  Empire  has  left  the  memory  of  a  happy, 
brilliant  epoch.  If  the  chances  of  the  Bonaparte 
dynasty  have  appeared  at  various  periods,  and  even  at 
present  appear,  greater  than  those  of  the  Orleans  family, 
it  is  not,  as  people  will  often  imagine,  owing  to  the 
afterglow  of  the  first  Napoleon,  but  to  the  popularity 
of  his  nephew.  The  working  classes  had  never  been 
treated  as  kindly  as  they  were  under  the  legislation 
which  bore  the  name  of  the  Prince  Imperial  and  made 
it  beloved,  and  the  unheard-of  commercial  expansion 
of  those  days  made  their  lives  incomparably  happier 
than  at  any  other  period  in  the  nineteenth  century; 
after  more  than  forty  years,  they  have  not  forgotten  it. 
As  to  the  bourgeoisie  and  aristocracy,  they  had  number- 
less opportunities  for  a  life  of  luxury,  which  speculation 
or  trade  made  it  easy  to  keep  up,  and  on  which  the 
brilliant  Court  at  the  Tuileries  threw  its  eclat.  The 
survivors  of  this  age  speak  of  it  as  one  of  those  happy 
times  during  which  men  feel  almost  physically  the 
enjoyment  of  living.  All  the  men  seemed  witty,  and 
all  the  women  seemed  beautiful.    Literature  counted  a 


The  End  of  the  Empire  39 

few  great  names,  the  fame  of  which  ennobled  all  the 
rest,  but  its  characteristics  were  not  greatness  and 
elevation,  which  would  have  hardly  been  in  keeping 
with  the  mood  of  the  readers;  abundance,  facility, 
graceful  ease,  and  cleverness  with  a  dash  of  cynicism, 
of  which  people  had  not  had  time  to  grow  tired,  were 
what  was  craved  and  plentifully  supplied.  Everything 
was  smooth  and  easy. 

Such  an  epoch  is  hardly  one  during  which  reflection 
and  wisdom  are  likely  to  flourish.  The  fact  is  that, 
especially  between  1855  and  1867,  the  French  lived  as 
much  on  illusions  as  on  pleasure.  Everybody  seemed 
bent  upon  deceiving  himself.  The  Emperor  had  his 
own  dreams  of  a  Europe  that  would  consist  of  racially 
united  portions,  so  happy  in  their  union  as  not  to  wish 
for  anything  else.  The  Ministers  were  apt  to  catch  a 
reflection  from  their  master's  beautiful  ideology;  when 
M.  de  Persigny  advised  the  Prussian  Minister  of  War 
always  to  keep  his  army  ready,  he  thought  he  was  speak- 
ing only  in  the  general  interest  of  Europe.  Ofiicers  de- 
luded themselves  about  the  army,  as  the  Emperor  did 
about  the  relation  of  France  to  her  rivals;  they  were 
innocent  of  modem  improvements,  innocent  of  dangers, 
and  only  thought  of  bravery.  Our  soldiers  had  been 
successful  in  the  Crimea,  successful  in  Italy,  and  even — 
in  spite  of  the  final  result — in  Mexico ;  why  should  they 
not  be  successful  again?  Were  not  Prussian  officers  to 
be  seen  year  after  year  following  the  French  manoeuvres 
at  Chalons?  If  they  did  not  feel  that  they  had  to  learn, 
they  would  not  take  the  trouble  to  go  to  school  to 
others. 

So  there  was  no  ideal  in  the  France  of  Napoleon  III, 
but  there  was  a  great  deal  of  ideology  and  a  great  deal 
of   self-satisfaction.     The   only   movement   that   had 


40  The  Deterioration  of  France 

something  idealistic  about  it  was  the  Republican  move- 
ment. Its  promoters  were  either  men  who  had  seen 
1848,  and  never  forgotten  the  divine  enthusiasm  which 
possessed  the  whole  French  nation  until  Bonaparte 
came  and  crushed  it,  or  younger  men  who  believed 
in  Progress  as  implicitly  as  their  elders  believed  in 
Fraternity.  These  enthusiasts  had  faith,  but  it  was 
the  faith  which  is  as  likely  to  mislead  as  to  guide;  there 
was  no  light  in  it — only  the  gleams  which  look  so 
fascinating  when  they  are  reflected  from  all  nascent 
ideologies.  What  was  needed  in  the  last  years  of  the 
Empire  was  a  clear  eye  to  see  that  the  danger  of  France 
did  not  come  from  lack  of  liberty  but  from  the  rapid 
growth  of  Prussia;  the  remedy  was  not  mere  warm- 
heartedness, but  will-power,  strength,  and  method. 
It  will  always  remain  as  a  blemish  on  the  Republican 
group  of  1867  that  they  opposed  the  effort  made  by  the 
declining  Empire  to  improve  its  army,  though  three 
years  later  they  were  to  clamour  more  loudly  than 
anybody  else :  Guerre  d  outrance! 

While  this  blind  optimism  or  as  blind  longing  for 
something  new  prevailed  among  the  masses,  the  highly 
educated  were  as  far  from  the  enlightening  contact  of 
reality;  they  did  not  live  in  clouds — far  from  it — but 
they  lived  in  the  stars,  and  the  results  were  the  same. 
The  French  politician  and  the  French  officer  would  not 
see  that  Germany  was  the  enemy,  but  to  Renan  and 
Taine  and  their  numerous  followers,  Germany  was  the 
friend.  What  did  they  care  about  artillery  and  com- 
missariat? Their  business  was  with  thoughts,  with  the 
interpretation  of  the  past,  and  the  anticipation  of  the 
future,  and  in  all  this  Germany  was  their  teacher,  and 
they  proclaimed  themselves  grateful  disciples.  It  was 
evident  to  them  from  their  knowledge  of  history  that 


The  End  of  the  Empire  41 

only  ideas  have  any  chance  of  survival  in  the  succession 
of  facts.  So  they  thought  that  speculation  was  as 
patriotic  as  action  and  immeasurably  superior,  and  as 
— very  different  in  this  from  their  German  models — 
they  believed  that  patriotism  as  a  mere  sentiment  is 
rather  in  the  way  of  philosophy,  they  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  anti-patriotism,  imagining  all  the  time  that  they 
were  only  building  a  temple  to  Truth. 

This  admixture  of  light-hearted  or  even  dare-devil 
optimism  among  the  unthinking,  and  of  ideology  among 
their  leaders,  with  the  touch  of  dangerous  enthusiasm 
added  by  the  Republicans  which  is  characteristic  of  the 
Second  Empire,  recalls  almost  invincibly  the  latter  part 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  There  was  the  same  levity, 
the  same  enjoyment  of  life  and  pleasure,  the  same 
elegant  materialism,  in  the  brilliant  butterflies  at 
Versailles,  side  by  side  with  the  reckless  speculation 
of  the  Encyclopaedists  and  the  reforming  audacity 
of  Rousseau's  followers.  There  was  also  the  same 
indifference  to  matter-of-fact  considerations,  which, 
however,  were  in  the  long  run  to  appear  of  more 
importance  than  high-flown  philosophies.  We  shall 
see  that,  as  the  ideology  of  the  Encydopcedia  and  the 
Contrat  Social  persisted  long  after  the  Revolution  which 
they  brought  about,  the  ideology  of  Renan  survived 
its  exponent's  disillusionment,  and  its  effects  went  on 
long  after  competent  judges  had  found  it  wanting. 
The  spirit  of  the  Third  Republic  we  shall  find  to 
have  been  a  strange  blending  of  scepticism  about  vital 
verities  and  ineradicable  belief  in  mere  words  which  is 
only  a  development  of  the  spirit  of  the  Second  Empire. 
But  this  development  took  place  unknown  to  its  very 
champions,  and  if  we  want  to  form  an  idea  of  the 
atmosphere  of  France  towards  1867,  we  must  think  of  a 


42  The  Deterioration  of  France 

warm  summer  evening  at  the  end  of  a  day  of  pleasure 
in  some  not  very  refined  Parisian  quarter  or  seaside 
resort,  with  snatches  from  the  bold  conversation  of  gay 
philosophers  attracted  by  the  fun  and  yet  despising  it. 
The  threats  of  a  storm  brewing  above  the  horizon  only 
a  very  few  people  perceived. 

Yet  there  were  such  clear-sighted  observers,  and 
their  paucity  did  not  make  their  anxiety  lighter  to  bear. 
Strange  to  say,  the  Emperor,  who  had  been  so  imper- 
vious to  signs  about  which  a  man  in  his  position  ought 
not  to  have  been  mistaken,  felt  misgivings  before  his 
entourage  had  any.  He  realized  that  his  imprudence 
could  not  but  be  punished  by  at  least  a  severe  trial  in 
which  he  might  yet  be  victorious,  but  which  might 
also  result  in  his  ruin,  that  of  his  dynasty,  and  eventu- 
ally that  of  France  itself.  The  gentleness  of  his  sway 
during  the  past  years  of  his  reign,  the  wistfulness  with 
which  he  would  listen  to  any  advice,  were  signs  that 
his  mind  was  troubled,  and  that  he  tried  to  divide 
responsibilities  too  heavy  for  one  man.  While  his  sub- 
jects were  revelling  in  carelessness,  he  was  slowly 
wasted  by  care  and  disease,  and  this  partly  redeems 
the  folly  of  his  previous  policy. 

Among  the  true  patriots  who  had  no  illusions  about 
the  seriousness  of  the  position  to  which  not  only 
political  errors  but  the  corruption  of  thought  and 
morals  had  reduced  France,  there  was  one  for  whom 
the  writer  of  this  book  feels  the  most  sincere  admira- 
tion, and  concerning  whom  even  comparative  oblivion 
seems  exceptionally  unjust.  Certainly,  if  Prevost-Para- 
dol'  had  been  fortimate  enough  to  live  in  a  time  when 

*  He  was  a  journalist,  but  of  exceptional  culture,  having  been  the 
schoolmate  of  Taine  at  the  Ecole  Normale,  and  revealing  his  rare 
gifts  almost  from  ,the  first.    Shortly  before  the  War  of  1870,  he  was 


Paradol  on  France^s  Future  43 

his  book  had  been  a  record  of  greatness  rather  than  an 
anticipation  of  disaster,  he  would  be  looked  upon  as 
one  of  the  masters  of  the  language  and  one  of  the  most 
astonishing  readers  of  the  future  that  ever  held  a  pen. 
His  book,  La  France  Nouvelle,  to  which  pride  and 
patriotism  alone  prevented  him  from  giving  another 
more  depressing  title,  was  published  in  1868,  and  in  the 
precision  of  its  conjectures  leaves  far  behind  all  similar 
works  of  historic  philosophy.  Compared  to  it,  the  Con- 
siderations sur  la  France  of  Joseph  de  Maistre  appears 
rhetorical,  fanciful,  and  often  wide  of  the  mark.  As  a 
literary  work  it  has  a  full  right  to  be  called  a  master- 
piece. No  modem  writing  recalls  so  forcibly  the 
earnestness  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  perfection  of  the 
best  ancients.  Paradol  wrote  this  book — it  is  not  say- 
ing too  much — with  the  blood  of  his  heart,  and  yet  with 
an  intellectual  self-control  resulting  in  unfailing  lu- 
cidity ;  his  pages  are  those  of  a  Stoic,  but  there  is  more 
than  emotion  hidden  under  this  apparent  coolness — 
there  is  a  mortal  wound,  and  the  quiet  beauty  of  La 
France  Nouvelle  is  that  of  a  dying  speech.  An  extract 
from  the  concluding  chapter  will  show  how  clearly  the 
French  of  1868  might  have  read  in  it  their  portrait  and 
their  doom. 

12.    ParadoVs   Conjectures  on  the   Future  of  France 

After  examining  the  moral  condition  of  France,  and 
concluding  that  religion  and  the  sense  of  duty  no  longer 
had  any  influence  on  its  national  life,  but  honour  still 
subsisted  in  it  as  an  element,  undoubtedly  weaker,  of 

appointed  French  Minister  at  Washington.  Both  he  and  his  son 
committed  suicide  on  hearing  of  the  French  disasters.  Paradol  was 
only  forty  years  old,  and  his  son  was  not  twenty. 


44  The  Deterioration  of  France 

energy,  Paradol  went  on  to  inquire  into  the  political 
circumstances  of  the  country. 

France,  he  said,  is  now  drawing  near  the  severest 
trial  through  which  she  ever  had  to  pass.  The  dis- 
membering of  Denmark,  suffered  by  her  in  spite  of  the 
protests  of  England,  and  her  countenancing  Prussia 
against  Austria,  are  facts  which  it  is  useless  post 
eventum  to  discuss,  but  with  which  it  is  necessary  to 
count.  Another  fact  which  is  to  be  taken  for  granted, 
without  going  into  its  moral  significance,  is  the  effort 
of  Prussia  towards  the  unity  of  Germany.  What,  then, 
is  the  situation  created  for  France  by  these  facts? 
Will  the  progress  of  Prussia  in  Germany  go  on  un- 
hampered, or  will  France  attempt  to  stop  it  by  a 
military   intervention? 

Let  us  examine  both  alternatives,  and,  first  of  all, 
the  hypothesis  of  a  war  between  France  and  Prussia, 
whatever  its  outcome  may  be. 

Shall  we  defeat  Prussia?  It  is  a  remarkable  sign 
of  the  times  that  this  question  should  be  asked  at  all. 
The  problem  used  to  be:  Can  France  resist  the  whole 
of  Europe  in  a  coalition?  To-day,  it  appears  that  a 
contest  between  France  and  Prussia  would  be  a  danger- 
ous testing  of  our  power.  However,  we  may  suppose 
that  victory  will  remain  with  us.  What  should  we  do 
with  it?  Shall  we  abide  by  the  principle  of  nationalities 
which  has  been  the  guiding  idea  of  the  policy  of  the 
Emperor,  or  shall  we  imitate  Prussia  in  her  treatment 
of  Posen  and  Schleswig,  by  annexing  Belgium  and 
creating  an  independent  kingdom  on  the  Rhine?  Either 
alternative  offers  considerable  difficulties,  for  we  shall 
be  obliged  to  make  war  for  nothing  or  to  leave  Prussia 
irritated  and  resentful. 

But  victory  may  not  be  faithful  to  us,  and  we  have  at 


Paradol  on  France's  Future  45 

present  to  view  the  possibility  of  a  defeat.  Supposing, 
then,  that  Prussia,  alone  or  with  the  support  of  Russia, 
gets  the  better  of  us,  who  does  not  see  that  the  greatness 
of  France  would  be  a  thing  of  the  past?  France,  of 
course,  would  not  be  swept  clean  away.  The  jealousy 
of  all  against  her  being  once  satisfied,  the  jealousy  of 
the  conquerors  against  one  another,  or  that  of  the 
neutral  powers  against  the  conquerors,  would  incline 
them  to  let  us  subsist,  helpless  and  disgraced,  amidst 
our  ruins.  It  is  even  possible  that  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
might  not  be  taken  away  from  us,  but  what  was  sure 
to  be  hopelessly  taken  away  from  us  would  be  the  power 
to  oppose  such  a  step  the  day  oiu*  rival  thought  it 
advisable,  and  this  day  could  hardly  be  long  put  off. 
Meanwhile  the  unity  of  Germany,  helped  by  the  pres- 
tige of  the  Prussian  victory,  would  be  achieved  at  once ; 
Austria  would  become  another  Turkey ;  and  the  Oriental 
question  would  promptly  be  settled  without  any 
reference  to  us. 

We  now  have  to  examine  the  other  hypothesis,  that 
of  Peace — that  is  to  say,  the  possibility  of  a  non- 
interference of  France  in  the  presence  of  a  continuous 
aggrandizement  of  Prussia.  It  is  the  less  probable  of  the 
two.  Not  because  the  Prussian  Government  is  likely 
to  declare  war  or  the  French  Government  to  wish  it; 
there  is  little  doubt  but  the  chiefs  of  both  States  are 
honestly  in  favour  of  peace.  But,  whatever  men  may 
wish,  things  are  such  that  they  must  bring  on  a  war; 
it  is  impossible  that  Prussia,  in  spite  of  her  prudence, 
should  not  take  fresh  steps  towards  the  absorption  of 
Germany,  and  no  less  impossible  that  the  French 
Government  should  witness  such  a  move  without 
interfering. 

This  fatal  dilemma  forces  itself  upon  our  minds  even 


46  The  Deterioration  of  France 

apart  from  the  unexpected  incidents  which  may  at  any 
moment  render  peace  precarious.  The  more  one  thinks 
about  it,  the  more  evident  it  appears  that  neither 
philosophy,  nor  humanity,  nor  the  firm  resolve  of 
governments  can  stave  off  a  contest  between  expanding 
Prussia  and  France  shut  in  between  her  old  frontiers. 
As  long  as  this  shock  does  not  take  place,  everybody 
feels  that  uncertainty  must  subsist,  and  that  the  claims 
of  the  rising  nation  to  greatness,  as  well  as  those  of  the 
older  power  to  influence,  cannot  be  settled.  In  any 
case,  France,  if  she  succeeds,  will  pay  with  the  blood 
of  her  children;  if  she  fails,  with  her  position  and 
possibly  her  existence,  for  the  mistake  she  made  the 
day  when  the  dismembering  of  Denmark  began  and 
was  suffered  to  go  on. 

Yet  it  is  not  absolutely  impossible  that  peace  may  be 
preserved,  but  the  consequences  of  inaction  will  be  the 
same  for  France  as  those  of  a  defeat.  Whether  the 
imity  of  Germany  is  accomplished  before  France  in- 
different or  before  France  humiliated,  the  result  will  be 
the  irrevocable  decay  of  French  greatness.  Fifty-one 
millions  of  Germans  will  be  imited  under  one  flag, 
whereas  France  will  count  only  thirty-six  millions,  and 
as  the  military  forces  of  Germany  are  concentrated, 
disciplined,  and  provided  with  all  the  resources  of 
modem  science,  in  the  new  system  of  war,  consisting 
in  suddenly  laimching  enormous  masses  of  men  one 
against  the  other,  the  struggle  will  inevitably  be 
disproportionate. 

Some  people  go  on  repeating:  Why  should  we  picture 
the  future  in  such  dark  colours,  why  should  not  the  new 
Germany  ttim  out  to  be  a  peaceable  community,  ex- 
clusively attentive  to  commerce,  industry,  and  litera- 
ture?   Why  should  we  not  hope  that  the  unification  of 


Paradol  on  France^s  Future  47 

Germany  will  be  the  first  step  towards  a  broader  fra- 
ternity of  nations?  This  question  can  only  be  answered 
by  another:  Why  should  we,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world,  see  a  great  power  stop  in  its  growth 
from  a  mere  sense  of  justice,  respect  the  weak  in  their 
decadence,  and  forego  without  being  compelled  to  it 
every  desire  of  domination?  This  would  be  a  miracle. 
You  may  be  right,  the  same  people  insist,  and  it  is 
probable  that  Germany  will  become  one  nation,  that 
Austria  will  be  dissolved,  Holland  annexed,  and  that 
all  the  great  questions  pending  in  the  East  will  be 
settled  without  us,  but,  at  all  events,  France  will  not  he 
invaded.  Who  has  not  heard  this  naive  statement  put 
forward  as  the  last  and  strongest  argument  of  those  who 
will  not  take  alarm  at  the  new  condition  of  Europe? 
But  it  is  touching  rather  than  reasonable.  It  is  more 
than  doubtful  that  we  need  only  renounce  every  par- 
ticipation in  the  affairs  of  Eturope  to  be  let  alone  within 
our  frontiers,  and  it  is  against  reason  that  our  eastern 
provinces  will  be  left  us  out  of  mere  kindness  just  when 
we  are  no  longer  in  a  position  to  defend  them.  However, 
let  us  take  it  for  granted  that,  in  the  time-honoured 
phrase,  France  will  not  he  invaded.  Is  it  necessary  for  a 
country  to  be  invaded  to  vanish  from  the  political  stage, 
and  become  dependent  upon  the  pleasure  of  others  ?  Has 
Portugal  been  invaded?  Did  we  feel  constrained  to 
invade  it  a  few  years  ago  when  we  had  a  difficulty  with 
the  Portuguese  Government  about  some  trader?  A 
French  man-of-war  simply  put  into  the  mouth  of  the 
Tagus,  cut  off  the  moorings  of  the  ship  we  thought 
unduly  detained,  and  steamed  away  with  her  under  the 
very  noses  of  the  Portuguese  guns.  Are  we  prepared  to 
take  the  same  treatment  from  the  new  arbitrators  of 
Europe,  and  to  tolerate  a  repetition  of  the  same  scene 


48  The  Deterioration  of  France 

in  the  mouth  of  the  Seine?  Let  us  confess  the  bitter 
truth :  There  is  no  golden  mean  for  a  nation  once  glorious 
between  keeping  up  its  former  prestige  or  altogether 
losing  it.  There  is  indeed  a  moment  of  transition,  but 
how  very  brief !  In  fact,  there  is  no  point  at  which  such  a 
fall  can  be  suspended.  One  has  either  to  resist,  or  roll 
down  to  the  bottom  of  degradation.  Let  us,  then, 
accept  the  alternative  which  our  past  forces  upon  us; 
on  one  hand  remain,  at  the  cost  of  immense  sacrifices, 
what  our  history  and  the  intelligent  perseverance  of  our 
ancestors  made  us,  or,  on  the  other,  hoping  for  the  best 
and  supposing  that  we  shall  be  suffered  undiminished 
to  survive  our  historic  existence,  stay  quiet  in  our 
modest  possessions,  with  both  mind  and  heart  weakened 
by  our  resignation  and  on  a  level  with  our  new  fortunes, 
but  still  harping  on  our  former  glories  and  wearying 
Europe  with  the  names  of  Louis  XIV  and  Napoleon, 
much  as  the  names  of  Philip  the  Second  and  Charles  the 
Fifth,  frequently  invoked  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Pyrenees,  reach  indeed  our  ears,  but  leave  us  indifferent. 

Paradol  concluded  with  suggesting  the  only  remedy 
he  thought  possible:  Cease  to  look  upon  Algeria  as  a 
mere  settlement,  colonize  it  with  Frenchmen,  not  for- 
eigners; therefore  take  measures  to  stop  depopulation, 
and  in  time  create  on  either  side  of  the  Mediterranean 
an  empire  of  eighty  or  a  hundred  million  Frenchmen 
which  no  European  influence  could  hold  in  check. 

Whatever  his  hope  of  the  adoption  of  this  remedy 
might  be,  Paradol  certainly  saw  the  real  situation  with 
astonishing  lucidity;  the  statement  that  the  French 
were  weakened  by  a  double  source  of  influence — an  anti- 
Christian  philosophy  on  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  a 
growing  indifference  to  the  position  of  France  as  a 
European   factor — summed    up    the    deterioration   of 


The  Denouement  49 

France  as  clearly  as  if  the  writer  had  actually  read 
her  future  history. 

13.     The  Denouement 

Two  years  after  the  publication  of  La  France  Nou- 
velle,  the  catastrophe  came  at  last.  Thoughtlessness  or 
unwise  thinking  met  its  reward.  The  War  of  1870  was 
not  the  first  great  modem  war;  the  Revolutionary 
period  had  seen  several  times  before  whole  nations 
represented  by  their  youngest  or  bravest  being  hurled 
against  one  another,  but  it  was  the  first  scientific  war, 
with  more  regard  to  science  than  to  the  old  code  of 
chivalry,  and  the  fiashlike  rapidity  which  is  a  condition 
of  success  in  modem  wars.  Bismarck,  von  Moltke,  and 
von  Roon  had  watched  their  opportunity  with  untiring 
patience,  and  had  not  lost  a  minute  in  the  preparation 
of  their  attack.  They  were  helped  by  the  incredible 
folly  of  the  French  diplomacy  at  first,  and  of  the  French 
military  authorities  afterwards.  The  result  of  genius 
and  perseverance  being  pitted  against  levity  and  im- 
prudence was  fully  what  ought  to  have  been  expected; 
the  War  of  1870  can  only  be  adequately  described  by 
the  French  word  which  has  almost  become  its  synonym; 
it  was  a  debacle,  with  at  first  the  astonishment,  then  the 
misgivings,  and  gradually  the  distrust,  the  discourage- 
ment, and  the  panic  which  are  its  moral  consequences. 
Meanwhile  the  most  terrible  winter  was  raging,  and 
in  Paris  famine  was  added  to  all  the  other  horrors. 
Then  came  the  suspense  and  anxiety  of  Thiers's  pil- 
grimage to  all  the  monarchs  of  Europe  in  quest  of  sym- 
pathy and  assistance,  and  the  everlasting  Vce  victis 
which  to-day  seems  the  proper  answer  to  people  whose 
imprudence  was  alone  to  blame,  and  a  never-to-be- 
4 


50  The  Deterioration  of  France 

forgotten  lesson  for  the  future;  then  the  wrench  of  the 
Frankfort  treaty,  and  the  parting  with  Alsace-Lorraine, 
a  torture  which  those  who  feel  it  even  at  present  can 
alone  reaHze  in  its  exquisiteness,  and  shortly  afterwards 
the  gigantic  f ait-divers  of  the  Commune,  with  its  fires 
and  massacres,  and  a  touch  of  comic  vulgarity  over 
it  all  which  makes  it  more  repellent.  Meanwhile  the 
great  historic  result  towards  which  the  genius  of  Bis- 
marck and  the  blindness  of  the  Imperial  Government 
had  tended  became  a  fact.  Germany,  after  being  for 
centuries  the  poetic  name  of  the  Mother  of  Nations, 
suddenly  took  on  a  distinct  significance.  Where  there 
had  been  a  jumble  of  conflicting  interests,  rehgions,  and 
manners,  with  no  other  bond  than  the  language,  ap- 
peared a  formidable  politic  reality  which  was  to  change 
the  European  conditions  for  a  length  of  time  which 
cannot  yet  be  calculated.  Where  there  had  been  pleasant 
associations  attached,  appeared,  in  strong  contrast  with 
French  culture  and  English  civilization,  a  brutal  power 
which  the  commonest  bully  disguised  as  a  soldier  alone 
represents  adequately.  Germany  has  given  herself  up 
to  Prussia,  and  whatever  she  may  have  gained  by  the 
bargain  she  has  lost  in  foregoing  her  old  charm  and 
in  opening  for  herself  a  future  over  which  black  clouds 
already  hang. 

But  these  losses  of  Germany  can  only  appear  as 
losses  to  fine  sensibilities  or  to  exceptionally  clear- 
sighted historians,  whereas  the  loss  of  France  was  a 
fact  which  no  self-delusion — only  cowardice — could 
lessen.  In  1871,  less  than  thirty  years  after  Louis 
Philippe — "  bourgeois  **  King  as  he  was — could  say  that 
no  cannon  was  shot  in  Europe  without  his  permission, 
less  than  twenty  years  after  Napoleon  had  said  with- 
out any  bombast  that  his  subjects  being  happy  Europe 


The  Denouement  51 

might  be  at  peace,  France  had  fallen,  in  power,  in- 
fluence, poptdation,  and  moral  energy,  behind  a  rival 
whose  greatness  her  own  monarch  had  helped  and 
practically  made. 


SECTION  II 

DETERIORATION  OF  FRANCE  UNDER  THE  THIRD 
REPUBLIC 

The  object  of  this  section  is  to  show  how  the  moral  and 
political  decadence  of  France  which  had  begun  under 
the  Empire — thanks  to  the  audacity  of  a  few  thinkers 
and  writers  and  to  the  blindness  of  the  public  powers — 
was  continued  under  the  Third  Republic.  But  while  in 
the  preceding  regime  the  authorities  had  been  to  blame 
only  for  their  incapacity  and  had  uniformly  tended 
towards  order,  the  position  was  reversed  under  the 
Third  Republic:  the  spirit  of  disorder  ceased  to  be 
embodied  in  philosophies  and  poems ;  it  was  represented, 
expanded,  and — with  a  few  transient  lulls — made  worse 
by  the  authorities  themselves,  which  more  than  once 
seem  to  have  been  actually  possessed  by  a  destructive 
genius. 

I.    Is  the  Deterioration  to  he  put  down  to  the 
Republican  Institutions? 

The  coexistence  of  this  accelerated  falling  off  in  moral 
standard  and  political  influence  with  the  republican 
institutions  has  induced  many  critics,  some  of  them  of 
excellent  judgment,  to  say  that  here  was  another  in- 
stance of  the  ** institutions  corrupting  citizens,"  and 

52 


Is  It  from  Republicanism  ?  53 

that  the  Republic  as  a  regime  was  responsible  for  the 
decadence  chronologically  coinciding  with  it.  These 
critics,  foremost  of  whom  is  M.  Maurras,  with  his  school, 
insist  that  the  Republican  regime  is  synonymous  with 
instability,  and  often  with  demagogism — that  is  to  say, 
the  worst  form  of  disorder — ^and  that  no  good  can  come 
out  of  it.  They  point  out  that  the  democracies  of 
antiquity  were  only  prosperous  so  long  as  they  were 
oligarchies — avowedly  or  in  disguise — and  were  all  of 
them  ruined  by  the  germ  of  unrule  they  invariably 
developed.  The  deplorable  state  of  France  under  the 
Third  Republic,  they  urge,  is  only  one  more  illustration 
of  a  law  which  history  has  never  yet  belied. 

This  academic  discussion  is  not  new,  of  course;  the 
merits  and  demerits  of  constitutions  will  always  pro- 
vide men  with  an  exciting  topic,  while  the  other  great 
law,  of  the  inevitable  decay  of  all  human  foundations, 
will  always  provide  their  philosophy  with  melancholy 
food.  The  monarchical  system  looks  well  on  De  Bonald's 
pages,  and  the  Republican  ideal  is  captivating  in  the 
volumes  of  De  Tocqueville — this  is  a  matter  of  course. 
Realities  vary  with  times.  For  the  present  state  of  the 
world,  all  that  can  be  said  is  that  Democracy  works 
very  tolerably  in  the  New  Continent,  while  monarchies 
show  a  decided  superiority  in  the  old  one.  The  systems 
based  on  authority  certainly  help  the  public  spirit,  but 
when  the  public  spirit  is  weak,  even  monarchies  are 
precarious.  This  might  be  repeated  ad  nauseam  in  a 
thousand  formulae. 

We  should  be  very  careful  to  distinguish  between  the 
French  Republic  in  the  first  four  years  of  its  existence 
and  the  long  troubled  period  that  followed.  Under 
Thiers,  and  as  long  as  the  Assemblee  Nationale  was  not 
dissolved,  things  were  very  different  from  what  they 


54  The  Deterioration  of  France 

became  afterwards,  and  decidedly  more  satisfactory. 
The  will  of  the  nation  was  all  strained  towards  the 
noblest  objects;  viz.,  the  liberation  of  the  territory  still 
occupied  by  the  Germans,  the  improvement  of  the 
financial  situation  in  spite  of  the  enormous  war  in- 
demnity demanded  by  Bismarck,  and,  above  all,  the 
reformation  of  the  army.  Unity  of  feeling  concerning 
such  vital  points  is,  of  course,  a  unique  asset  in  the  life 
of  a  nation ;  but  there  was  something  else  that  made  for 
concentration  of  effort,  and  consequently  success.  The 
constitution  under  which  France  has  lived  and  lost  since 
1875  did  not  exist — ^it  was  not  even  thought  of.  The 
idea  universal  in  the  Assembly,  and  widely  spread  in  the 
country,  was  that  the  Republic  was  only  a  transitory  re- 
gime— practically  a  truce  between  the  Monarchists  who 
were  the  large  majority — and  that,  as  soon  as  the  most 
urgent  needs  of  France  had  been  seen  to,  an  arrangement 
would  be  made  between  the  Legitimists,  Orleanists,  and 
Imperialists,  and  the  King  would  come  back. 

Thus  France  lived  in  expectation  of  a  regime  of 
authority.  This  is  not  saying  enough;  compared  with 
the  constitution  I  shall  presently  describe,  the  govern- 
ment of  Thiers  was  a  regime  of  authority.  The  powers 
of  Thiers  differed  entirely  from  those  of  the  presidents 
who  came  after  him,  especially  those  who  were  elected 
after  1898,  when  the  Republic  had  lost  whatever  energy 
it  had  originally  possessed.  He  was  much  more  a 
Premier  than  a  President,  governed  as  personally  as  a 
President  of  the  United  States,  and  appeared  as  a 
responsible  authority.  Everybody  must  see  at  once 
liow  different  this  position  was  from  that  of  M.  Poin- 
care,  and  it  takes  the  stupidity  or  the  bad  faith  of  the 
low  politician  to  gainsay  that  it  was  not  more  favour- 
able to  the  welfare  of  the  country. 


Is  It  from  Republicanism  ?  55 

The  results,  it  is  well  known,  were  remarkable.  In 
less  than  three  years,  the  Germans  had  been  paid  off, 
the  Exchequer  of  France  appeared  decidedly  prosper- 
ous, and  the  army  had  been  strengthened.  The  nation 
was  on  the  high  road  to  speedy  recovery,  and  her  neigh- 
bours wondered  and  admired ;  Bismarck  was  doubtful  and 
uneasy  in  his  mind ;  altogether  the  moral  effects  of  the 
disaster,  recent  though  it  was,  were  fast  disappearing. 

Unfortunately  the  Assemblee  Nationale  was  divided, 
and  in  a  short  time  sacrificed  Thiers  to  its  divisions; 
MacMahon,  who  succeeded  him,  did  not  enjoy  the 
same  authority;  besides,  the  Assembly  had  to  adjourn 
itself;  as  its  members  made  up  their  minds  to  do  so 
before  settling  the  difficulties  which  were  in  the  way  of  a 
Restoration,  they  were  compelled  to  consolidate  the 
makeshift  arrangement  which  they  had  thought  would 
be  sufficient  for  a  while,  and  they  reluctantly  passed' 
the  laws,  the  ensemble  of  which  is  generally  called  the 
Republican  Constitution.  These  laws  were  made  by  a 
jealous  Assembly,  on  its  guard  against  the  President, 
inevitably  inclined  to  limit  his  power  lest  he  should  use 
it  against  the  Restoration,  and,  on  the  contrary,  anxious 
to  confer  as  much  authority  as  possible  on  the  Parlia- 
ment which  was  to  come  after  it.  On  the  whole,  these 
Monarchists  framed  a  constitution  which  is  not  only 
democratic  but  demagogic  in  its  principles. 

This  was  a  dangerous  mistake.  The  majority  in  the 
Assemblee  Nationale  took  it  for  granted  that  their  opin- 
ions, if  not  their  representatives,  would  be  the  same  in 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies  which  was  to  be  elected.  It 
never  occurred  to  them  that  things  might  turn  out 
differently,  and  that  the  couches  nouvelleSy  the  new 
strata,  the  existence  of  which  Gambetta  proclaimed  in 
a  famous  address,  might  give  rise  to  a  Parliament  as 


56  The  Deterioration  of  France 

new  in  its  spirit  as  these  were  in  their  formation.  They 
did  not  suspect  that  these  homines  novi  might  have 
grown  up  in  the  hotbeds  of  Taine's  and  Renan's  philo- 
sophies, and  be  full  of  undigested  notions  even  worse 
than  those  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  that,  consequently 
to  give  them  a  chance  of  securing  power  was  to  run  a 
risk  of  delivering  France  up  to  ideology,  and  sooner  or 
later  to  demagogism. 

Yet  this  was  what  happened.  The  Chamber  which 
the  first  general  election  (in  1876)  returned  was  not  the 
successor  but  the,  resolute  enemy  of  the  Assemblee 
Nationale.  Instea'd  of  the  Due  de  Broglie,  its  great 
leader,  was  Gambetta,  and  the  effects  of  such  a  change 
were  not  long  in  being  felt.  While  the  five  years  which 
came  after  the  war  had  seen  a  continuous  reviving  of 
the  national  energy,  the  years  that  immediately  fol- 
lowed the  election  of  the  first  Republican  Chamber  saw 
a  turn  for  the  worse  about  which  clear-sighted  observers 
had  no  uncertainty. 

We  can  therefore  leave  the  years  1 871-1875  out  of 
our  investigation  into  the  deterioration  of  France,  and 
date  its  second  period  from  1876.  This  was  not  the 
worst  either.  In  1898  the  rise  of  the  Socialists  inaugu- 
rated an  era  of  unheard-of  recklessness,  which  might  be 
going  on  at  the  present  moment,  if  the  national  danger 
in  1905  had  not  sobered  most  Frenchmen  capable  of 
reflection  or  at  least  of  patriotism. 

I 876-1 898 

2.    Imperfections  and  Dangers  of  the  so-called  Constitu- 
tion of  1875 

Drawn  up  as  I  have  just  said  they  were,  the  constitu- 
tional laws  were  calculated  to  weaken  the  legitimate 


Imperfections  and  Dangers  57 

authorities  and  to  seat  power  where  it  has  no  business 
to  be.  This  perversion  was  seen  very  early  by  all  men 
versed  in  constitutional  legislation,  but  it  took  time  to 
bring  it  home  to  differently  trained  intellects.  To-day, 
forty  years*  experience  has  left  no  doubt  even  in  the 
crudest  minds  that  the  Constitution  of  1875  is  largely 
responsible  for  the  state  of  disorder  in  which  France  has 
lived  since  its  slow  and  unwilling  preparation  and  by  no 
means  enthusiastic  promulgation.  Where  authority  is 
not,  disorder  is  sure  to  appear*,  and  the  constitutional 
laws  are  sneakingly  antagonistic  to  every  authority. 
\  The  President  of  the  Republic,  of  course,  has  no 
power;  he  is  only  the  official  representative  .of  the, 
country,  but  the  word  official  is  ona  which  in  France  at 
least,  has  gradually  taken  on  a  meaning  excluding  real 
authority.  In  the  United  States  of  America,  a  President 
is  directly  elected  by  the  nation,  and  enjoys  the  full 
delegation  of  the  nation's  power  during  the  four  years 
of  his  office.  He  knows  it  well,  and  if  anything  strikes 
even  the  casual  observer,  it  is  the  sense  that  an  Ameri- 
can President  has  of  his  responsibility,  and  the  dignity 
this  feeling  lends  to  his  actions  and  decisions.  In 
France,  the  President  is  elected  by  the  Chamber  and 
Senate  meeting  in  Congress,  and  this  alone  carries 
considerable  significance.  The  country  realizes  that 
the  relation  between  the  President  and  itself  is  not 
immediate,  that  it  has  nothing  to  say  to  it,  and  con- 
sequently that  it  may  as  well  take  no  interest  in  it. 
This,  in  fact,  is  what  happens.  The  Presidential  elec- 
tion to  which  France  seemed  the  most  attentive  was 
undoubtedly  that  of  M.  Poincare  in  19 13,  and  yet  a 
fortnight  before  it  took  place  the  name  of  M.  Poincar6 
had  hardly  been  mentioned  in  connection  with  it.  The 
two  preceding  elections  had  been  met  by  an  indifference 


58  The  Deterioration  of  France 

that  might  be  construed  as  almost  insulting;  that  of 
Felix  Faure  was  a  surprise;  only  a  handful  of  politicians 
had  supposed  it  was  possible.  So  the  election  of  a 
President  is  what  the  French  call  a  purely  political — 
that  is  to  say,  almost  the  reverse  of  a  national — affair. 

On  the  contrary,  the  relation  between  the  President 
and  the  Parliament  electing  him  is  very  close.  The 
President  invariably  belongs  to  either  ^the  Senate  or 
Chamber,  so  is  intimately  acquainted,  and  often  mixed 
up  with,  lobby  intrigues.  Having  been  a  member  of 
the  Assemblies  for  years,  it  is  inevitable  that  he  should 
share  their  point  of  view,  habits,  and  ethos  generally. 
The  result  is  that  he  feels  himself  not  the  country's,  btit 
their  delegate,  and  not  by  any  means  their  head.  It 
is  remarkable  that,  although  the  Constitution  empowers^ 
him  to  communicate  with  both  Houses  through:  mes- 
sages, he  never  uses  the  privilege ;  his  situation  compels 
him  to  act  in  a  semi-private  manner,  and  in  a  crisis  it 
is  never  he,  but  the  Prime  Minister,  who  is  the  centre 
of  attention. 

The  President  can  declare  war,  but  it  is  after  con- 
sulting Parliament ;  he  signs  the  treaties,  but  they  have 
to  be  countersigned  by  the  Foreign  Minister,  who  is 
their  real  author;  he  can  dissolve  the  Chamber,  but  it  is 
not  without  the  permission  of  the  Senate;  he  chooses  the 
Ministers,  it  is  true,  and  this  apparently  is  an  element 
of  efficiency,  but  his  choice  in  reality  is  not  free — it  was 
well  seen  in  Jime,  1914,  when  M.  Ribot  fell;  the  Minis- 
ters are  chosen  in  the  Chamber  or  Senate,  and  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Chamber  and  Senate  at  the  time  of 
the  fall  of  a  Cabinet  makes  it  clear  to  everybody  what 
the  new  Government  must  be. 

An  a  posteriori  argument  shows  more  conclusively 
than  anything  else  that  the  authority  of  the  President 


\. 


Imperfections  and  Dangers  59 

does  not  count  beside  that  of  the  Chamber;  only  twice, 
in  more  than  forty  years,  were  Presidents  openly  in 
conflict  with  Parliament;  those  Presidents  were  Thiers 
and  MacMahon — the  only  two  whom  their  past  as  well 
as  their  character  inclined  to  defend  their  privileges  or 
policy.  Both  were  promptly  defeated  by  their  powerful 
enemy,  and  compelled^  not  only  to  give  in  but  to  resign 
as  well. 

If  the  Ministers  were  appointed  for  seven  years,  like 
the  President,  they  would  appear  much  more  important 
persons  than  the  latter.  They  have  a  will,  and,  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  means  of  carrying  it  out.  They 
introduce  bills;  they  even  sign  decrees  which,  in  the 
absence  of  a  law,  have  the  same  compulsory  power. 
When  Parliament  happens  to^trust  them  for  any  length 
of  time^  or  to  wink  at  what  they  do,  they  may  leave  a 
certain  trace  behind  them.  Men  like  M.  Hanotaux  and 
M.  Delcasse,  at  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs,  like  M. 
Millerand  and  unfortunately  General  Andre  before  him 
at  the  War  Office,  belong  a  great  deal  more  to  history 
than  M.  Sadi  Camot,  M.  Loubet,  or,  above  all,  M. 
Falli^res.  But  these  are  exceptions.  One  could  hardly 
count  a  dozen  such  among  the  four  hundred  and  odd 
Ministers  who  held  office  since  1875.  The  French 
Cabinets  are  dependent  upon  and  imder  the  constant 
supervision  of  the  Chamber,  and,  when  the  danger  of 
the  nation  makes  responsibihties  less  desirable,  it  is 
only  for  a  short  time  that  Parliament  leaves  the  burden 
it  refuses  to  carry  to  the  men  who  have  a  right  to  take 
it  on  themselves.  The  consequence  is  that  Cabinets  are 
short-lived;  that  the  effects  of  their  policy  seldom  ap- 
pearing clearly  before  they  have  given  up  office,  or  even 
before  they  have  been  turned  out  by  Parliament,  they 
can  never  be  made  to  accoimt  for  their  actions;  that 


6o  The  Deterioration  of  France 

the  line  followed  by  a  Government  is  seldom  adopted 
by  the  Government  which  comes  after  it,  and  that, 
as  M.  Clemenceau  once  said,  with  his  usual  bluntness  in 
the  Chamber,  the  French  Republic  is  governed  inco- 
herently. Add  that  the  rule  has  almost  invariably  been 
that  the  more  difficult  parts,  those  of  the  Ministers  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  War,  Finance,  and  the  Navy,  are 
hardly  ever  entrusted  to  technicians,  and  that,  in  the 
words  of  M.  Faguet,  the  lack  of  proper  capacity  is 
generally  associated  with  the  dread  of  responsibilities. 
Illustrations  could  be  numberless.  The  history  of  the 
Ministry  of  Navy  alone  would  appear  as  a  long  tale  of 
expensive  and  dangerous  inconsistency. 

Neither  the  President  nor  the  Cabihet  having  au- 
thority, it  appears  evident  that  the  real  power  in  France 
rests  with  the  Parliament.  And  let  not  the  reader  be 
deceived  by  preconceived  ideas  suggested  by  American 
or  English  associations;  it  is  not  the  Speaker  of  the. 
Chamber  who  is  invested  with  any  special  authority. 
He  is  more  active  than  the  President  of  the  Republic 
and  far  more  respected  than  the  Prime  Minister,  no 
doubt,  and  being  appointed  for  a  year  he  enjoys  a  sort 
of  stability,  but  his  power  does  not  exceed  the  limits  of 
the  Parliamentary  regulations;  beyond  the  application 
of  these  disciplinarian  rules  he  can  do  nothing.  So  the 
real  possessor  of  authority  is  the  Chamber  itself — much 
more  than  the  Senate,  whose  essential  duty  is  only  to 
ratify  or  modify  the  bills  sent  up  from  the  other  House. 

Under  the  Second  Empire,  when,  after  years  of 
obscurity,  the  Chamber  oi  Deputies  emerged  once  more 
into  the  light,  one  arrangement  was  kept  up  which 
limited  the  initiative  of  the  Chamber  in  a  very  wise 
manner.  The  Bills  submitted  to  the  debates  were  not 
introduced  by  individual  members;  they  were  proposed 


Imperfections  and  Dangers  6i 

and  prepared  outside  the  Assembly  by  the  Council  of 
State,  a  body  of  eighty  men  with  exceptional  legal  or 
political  training,  who  even  now  enjoy  a  consideration 
similar  to  that  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Washington. 
The  quiet  work  of  these  experts  saved  a  great  deal  of 
wavering  and  idle  speechifying  in  the  Chamber.  This 
excellent  system  was  ignored  in  the  constitutional  laws, 
and  not  only  any  ephemeral  minister,  but  any  ignorant 
or  even  anarchical  deputy,  can  introduce  a  bill,  de- 
scribe it  with  lengthy  complacence ;  and  compel  the 
Chamber  to  give  it  attention.  The  number  of  these 
private  attempts  at  legislating  is  so  great  that  the  four 
years  of  the  existence  of  a  Chamber  are  never  enough  to 
attend  to  them,  and  to  the  usual  discussion  of  the  bud- 
get as  well.  Many  a  Bill  is  looked  into,  placed  on  the 
order  of  the  day,  and  sometimes  debated  for  months, 
which  eventually  cannot  be  definitely  passed  or  thrown 
out  because  a  new  Chamber  is  returned  before  the 
deputies  have  had  time  to  make  up  their  minds  about  it. 
This  accounts  for  no  fewer  than  eight  Income  Tax  Bills 
having  been  not  merely  laid  on  the  table  but  amended 
and  perfected  by  months  and  even  years  of  sometimes 
excellent  work,  without  any  one  of  them  ever  taking 
any  effect  till  19 14. 

So  the  Chamber  legislates  at  will  about  the  most 
difficult  questions ;  nothing  has  been  more  frequent  in  its . 
history  than  seeing  this  Assembly — mostly  consisting 
of  lawyers — amending  a  knotty  bill  on  some  naval 
technicality,  defended  by  a  Minister  of  Navy  who  was 
not  a  naval  man,  but  another  lawyer  or  a  physician. 
Here  again  incapacity  is  the  rule,  and  also  once  more 
irresponsibility,  for  a  Chamber  consisting  of  six  hundred 
members  is  at  first  sight  eminently  anonymous,  but  it  is 
so  even  more  than  it  seems;  the  anonymous 'deputy,  who 


62  The  Deterioration  of  France 

gives  his  vote  about  a  question  of  which  he  knew  no- 
thing before  debates  often  more  confusing  than  enligh- 
tening, is  not  his  own  master;  other  anonymous  people, 
somewhere  in  his  far-away  constituency,  have  also  their 
opinion  on  the  bill  at  issue — an  opinion  largely  founded 
on  what  they  conceive  to  be  the  effect  of  that  bill  on 
their  own  private  interests — ^and  they  vote  qtiite  as 
effectually  as  their  effaced  representative. 

The  Chamber  which  possesses  all  the  legislating 
power  has  long  arrogated  to  itself,  and  still  is  inclined  to 
secure  for  itself  whenever  there  is  a  chance  of  doing  so 
without  incurring  immediate  responsibilities,  the  execu- 
tive power  as  well.  This,  of  course,  belongs  nominally 
to  the  President  and  his  ministers;  but  the  President 
never  was  known  to  do  more  than  countersign  the  laws, 
and  as  to  the  ministers,  they  have  under  them,  it  is  true, 
the  officials  who  are  responsible  for  the  daily  matter-of- 
fact  details  of  the  enactment  of  a  law,  but,  thanks  to  the 
right  of  interpellation,  they  are  amenable  to  any  ques- 
tion which  the  most  obscure  member  is  pleased  to  ask 
them.  They  all  know  it,  and  act  accordingly.  M. 
Combes,  who  was  remarkable  for  a  frankness  not  to  be 
mistaken  for  courage,  avowedly  professed  himself  the 
agent  of  the  Chamber.  The  Cabinet,  during  the  three 
years  he  heldoffice,  was  purely  a  name,  the  heads  of 
the  Parliamentary  groups  meeting  regularly  the  Prime 
Minister  and  informing  him  in  advance  of  the  pleasure 
o^  their  adherents,  did  duty  for  the  ministers;  it  was  the 
only  period  during  which  the  constitutional  laws  were 
applied  not  in  the  hypocrisy  of  their  letter  but  in  the 
sincerity  of  their  spirit.  Then  the  Chamber  was  ab- 
solutely the  supreme  ruler  that  the  members  of  the 
Assemblee  Nationale  wanted  it  to  be. 

The  results  of  a  preposterous  combination  placing 


An  Element  of  Division  63 

the  power  where  there  is  no  responsibility  will  appear  in 
the  following  chapters;  we  shall  see  that  the  intestine 
divisions  of  the  politicians,  their  forgetfulness  of  1870, 
their  seeking  a  diversion  in  a  colonial  policy,  and  accept- 
ance of  a  sometimes  humiliating  system  of  alliances  in 
consequence,  their  own  moral  deterioration  and  narrow- 
minded  persecutions  of  Catholics  they  affect  to  regard 
as  enemies,  are  the  natural  product  of  an  absurdity 
disguised  as  a  constitution.  All  the  questions  which 
puzzled  foreigners  ask  so  often  about  French  politics, 
about  their  corruption,  about  the  continuation  of  an 
action  out  of  which  no  good  effects  ever  seem  to  arise, 
and  the  only  positive  result  of  which  is  religious  intoler- 
ance, are  easily  solved  by  the  consideration  of  the 
uncontrolled  power  of  the  Chamber.  The  French  Cham- 
ber can  only  be  compared  to  an  absolute  monarch,  but 
whereas  an  absolute  monarch  may  rouse  and  gradually 
centre  upon  himself  hatred  enough  for  his  overthrow,  the 
Chamber  being  apparently  an  image  of  the  country  and 
in  reality  an  unseizable  Proteus,  the  deputies  can  only 
be  reformed  by  themselves,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  slow 
influx  into  them  of  the  best  public  spirit.  Now  French 
Assemblies  have  been  known  so  to  feel  the  influence  of 
the  country  as  to  sacrifice  themselves,  but  that  was  at 
exceptional  epochs  of  rare  enthusiasm,  say  1790,  and 
coups  d'etat  have  been  of  infinitely  more  frequent 
occurrence. 

3.     The  Chamber  an  Element  of  Division^  not  of  Union 

I  said  above  that  until  1875,  when  the  Assemblee 
Nationale  dissolved  itself,  a  patriotic  spirit  of  reparation 
had  kept  the  members  of  this  Assembly  united  enough 
for  the  accomplishment  of  their  chief  object,  viz.,  the 


64  The  Deterioration  of  France 

healing  of  the  wounds  of  1870.  Things  were  very  differ- 
ent in  the  first  Chamber  elected  under  the  constitutional 
laws.  The  deputies  sent  to  Versailles  in  1871  had  been 
chosen  by  the  country  still  under  the  impression  of  the 
double  tragedy  of  the  war  and  the  Commune ;  they  were 
decidedly  conservative,  and  were  expected  to  work  in  a 
spirit  totally  different  from  that  of  Gambetta  and  his 
group.  Five  years  later  a  great  change  had  taken  place. 
France  had  recovered  from  her  shock,  and  instead  of 
the  bewilderment  of  defeat  she  felt  the  exhilaration  of 
convalescence.  She  was  tired  of  the  hesitations  and 
divisions  of  the  Assemblee  Nationale  concerning  a 
Restoration  which  at  present  did  not  appear  as  a 
necessity.  She  was  no  longer  afraid  of  Gambetta,  and 
began  to  be  as  convinced  as  Bismarck  that  his  name  no 
longer  meant  guerre  d  outrance.  So  in  1876  she  returned 
a  Chamber  which  was  in  majority  Republican.  The 
Monarchists  belonging  to  the  preceding  Assembly  saw 
with  amazement  that  the  constitution  they  had  devised 
as  a  shield  for  themselves  became  at  once  a  weapon  for 
the  Republicans.  These  Republicans  were  as  different 
from  themselves  as  could  be  imagined.  They  no  longer 
had  before  them  an  immediate  and  very  noble  object 
to  attract  their  energies;  they  were  much  more  men 
possessed  of  a  spirit  and  feeling  its  presence  powerfully 
but  not  distinctly.  And  what  was  this  spirit?  Emi- 
nently the  humanitarian,  philosophical,  and  anti-Chris- 
tian tendency  which  I  pointed  out  as  the  spirit  of  the 
Second  Empire.  Most  of  these  men  had  been  young 
barristers,  journalists,  or  medical  students  in  Paris  when 
Taine,  Renan,  Baudelaire,  Flaubert,  etc.,  were  the 
oracles  of  cultivated  youth,  and  they  now  reappeared 
full  of  that  dangerous  culture.  Henceforward  they, 
the  new  leaders,  would  govern   France  by  the  light 


An  Element  of  Division  65 

of  ideas  which  the  Second  Empire  had  tolerated  as 
academic  but  would  have  abhorred  if  they  had  been 
propounded  as  a  political  beacon.  And  these  new- 
comers might  well  affect  the  materialism  of  Taine,  the 
cosmopolitanism  and  dilettantism  of  Renan,  but  they 
could  not  be  philosophers  or  dilettanti  like  Taine  or 
Renan.  Their  vocation  being  politics  they  were  re- 
flections of  these  distinguished  men  as  professional 
politicians  can  be,  that  is  to  say,  in  a  coarse  manner. 
Their  chief  satisfaction  was  evidently  to  be  able  to 
combat  the  clergy — their  political  enemies — in  the 
name  of  science  and  philosophy.  During  the  first  five 
years  of  the  existence  of  the  Republican  regime  they 
had  had  serious  reasons  to  fear  lest  the  Republic  should 
only  be  a  monarchy  without  a  monarch,  and  while  the 
Assemblee  Nationale  was  divided  between  its  patriotic 
effort  and  its  incurable  divisions,  they  had  fought 
throughout  the  country  for  their  share  of  power  and 
their  portion  of  booty. 

Such  men,  excited  by  years  of  frustrated  expectation, 
by  the  recent  contest,  and  by  the  heat  of  victory,  were, 
in  the  full  force  of  the  term,  politicians  as  opposed  to 
statesmen,  that  is  to  say,  men  who  would  inevitably 
confuse  the  interest  of  their  party  and  their  own  selfish 
ambitions  with  the  interest  of  their  country.  In  this 
mood  and  with  this  background,  finding  a  constitution 
which  made  the  Chamber  the  supreme  master,  it  was 
impossible  that  they  should  look  beyond  the  limits  of 
party  politics.  In  fact,  from  their  first  success  in  1876 
till  the  great  shock  of  the  Tangier  incident  in  1905,  the 
history  of  France  as  written  by  her  deputies  is  merely 
the  history  of  the  Chamber,  nay,  of  the  majority  in  the 
successive  chambers.  With  no  authority  to  control 
them  the  deputies  could  only  follow  the  guidance  of 


66  The  Deterioration  of  France 

their  collective  passions  or  appetites,  and  they  did 
it. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  first  Republican  manifes- 
tations looked  very  much  like  persecution,  and  almost 
from  the  first  like  religious  persecution.  It  was  very 
natural  that  the  Republican  party  should  take  pre- 
cautions against  a  possible  return  of  their  opponents; 
it  was  even  comprehensible  that  the  recent  conquerors 
should  be  on  their  guard  against  the  alliance  of  the 
throne  and  the  altar,  but  Ferry  went  farther  than  even 
Gambetta  probably  wanted,  and  made  a  whole  category 
of  citizens  outlaws  at  once.  Vive  la  Repuhligue!  meant 
so  clearly :  Down  with  the  Monarchists !  down  with  the 
Moderates!  down  with  the  Catholics!  that  even  now, 
worn  out  as  forty  years  have  made  this  cry,  it  has  still 
the  hostile  sound  which  it  took  then.  It  is  a  watchword 
more  than  a  national  phrase,  and  the  Radicals  of  to-day 
are  as  ready  to  claim  a  right  of  proprietorship  in  it  as 
the  Opportunists  of  1877.  Peace,  unity,  reconciliation 
they  look  upon  as  personal  enemies,  and  they  have 
done  so  for  two  generations. 

Beside  the  satisfaction  of  their  hatreds  they  would 
also  have  that  of  their  appetites.  Gambetta  himself 
said  to  his  friend  Madame  Adam  that  it  was  only  just 
if  after  leading  his  soldiers  to  battle  he  should  let  them 
have  the  booty.  This  meant  an  everlasting  fight  for 
public  employments,  for  well-paid  sinecures,  for  privi- 
leges of  all  sorts,  and  a  stern  denial  of  their  due  to  those 
outside  the  party.  The  history  of  the  Third  Republic 
can  envy  that  of  previous  regimes  no  sort  of  corruption. 
The  numberless  changes  of  government  occurring 
without  any  very  marked  change  in  the  Republican 
personnel  show  clearly  that  interests  have  had  more  to 
do  with  them  than  principles  or  opinions.    Whenever 


An  Element  of  Division  67 

we  read  the  list  of  a  new  Cabinet  we  hear  people  un- 
aware of  political  realities  wonder  at  seeing  all  the 
shades  in  the  Republican  majority  so  well  represented 
in  it,  but  this  is  not  owing  to  the  penetration  and  pru- 
dence of  the  newly-made  Premier,  it  is  the  result  of 
very  matter-of-fact  negotiations  between  the  groups, 
and  the  list  of  names  can  easily  be  converted  into  a 
column  of  figures. 

Clever  as  a  lot  of  men  seeking  their  own  profit  in 
everything  may  be,  if  they  happen  to  be  legislators 
instead  of  forming  some  disreputable  corporation,  they 
have  to  legislate.  Now  legislating  is  a  somewhat  dan- 
gerous business.  As  long  as  you  can  legislate  against 
your  enemies,  and  are  sure  of  a  public  that  will  approve 
of  your  energetic  action,  it  is  very  well.  But  a  Parlia- 
ment cannot  endlessly  devise  laws  against  some  opin- 
ions or  some  categories  of  citizens.  A  time  comes  when 
positive  action  has  to  be  taken,  either  because  the 
majority  has  promised  it,  or  because  the  minority 
threatens  agitation  if  measures  likely  to  be  popular 
are  not  adopted,  or  merely  because  a  whole  country 
cannot  admit  the  fiction — so  dear  to  the  French  depu- 
ties— that  a  Parliament  does  enough  so  long  as  it 
governs.  Being  thus  constrained  to  pass  and  enact 
laws,  they  are  in  danger  of  creating  discontent  among 
their  friends  and  sometimes — wherever  taxation  is  in- 
volved— of  being  prejudicial  to  themselves,  their  family, 
or  their  clientele. 

This  necessity  has  been  the  motive  of  a  great  deal  of 
vain  talk  in  the  Chamber,  and  of  the  production  of  a 
certain  number  of  laws.  Some  of  these  have  been  mere 
sham;  for  instance,  all  the  Income  Tax  Bills  I  mentioned 
in  a  previous  chapter,  the  frequent  suppression  on  the 
eve  of  general  elections  of  the  sub-prefects,  and  the  no 


68  The  Deterioration  of  France 

less  frequent  passing  of  bills  destined  to  put  heavy 
taxation  on  luxuries — and  consequently  likely  to  please 
the  majority  of  electors — but  nullified  by  the  surrepti- 
tious introduction  of  numberless  clauses  of  exemption. 

Many  other  laws  have  been  passionately  discussed 
and  carefully  considered,  tried,  and  afterwards  re- 
pealed when  they  were  found  not  to  act  satisfactorily. 
But  all  this  wisdom  was  expended  mostly  upon  mea- 
sures concerning  the  Chamber  itself.  This  assembly 
never  shows  so  much  practical  good  sense,  it  is  never  so 
ready  alternately  to  stand  upon  principles  and  then 
resort  to  combinations,  as  when  its  own  existence  is  at 
stake.  These  admirably-balanced  laws  have  concerned 
mostly  the  suffrage,  and  it  is  wonderful  that  the  coun- 
try should  not  have  been  early  aware  that  the  interest 
which  the  Chamber  evinced  in  electioneering  matters 
was  not  interest  in  the  electors  but  interest  in  the 
elected. 

Finally,  the  Chamber  has  often  passed  laws  which 
were  to  give  pleasure  to  the  coimtry  at  large;  for  in- 
stance, the  many  military  laws,  all  intended  to  make 
the  burden  of  the  military  service  lighter  at  least  to  the 
multitude,  and  the  labour  laws,  the  laws  on  public 
assistance,  the  nationalization  of  railways,  etc. — these 
measures  were  uniformly  called  truly  democratic  before 
being  enacted,  but  the  moment  their  effects  were  seen 
they  had  to  be  given  their  true  name,  which  is  demagog- 
ism,  and  either  had  to  be  repealed  or  to  be  obviated  by 
other  laws  ad  infinitum. 

Such  are  the  drawbacks  of  an  assembly  professedly 
destined  to  legislate,  but  through  a  fundamental  error 
empowered  to  govern.  Nobody  will  gainsay  the  state- 
ment that  since  1876,  and  even  during  the  existence  of 
the  Assemblee  Nationale,  the  deputies  have  sought 


The  Revanche  Given  Up  69 

primarily  their  own  advantage,  and  only  thought  of  the 
country's  welfare  in  connection  with  it.  Of  a  policy 
based  on  the  state,  progress,  and  moves  of  the  surround- 
ing countries,  and  really  entitled  to  the  name  of  a 
national  policy,  it  is  too  clear  that  they  have  been 
ignorant.  No  unguided  assembly  ever  is  conscious  of 
that  supremely  important  side  of  politics  unless  the 
existence  of  the  nation  be  at  stake,  and  the  common 
danger  sweep  away  individual  selfishness;  even  then 
it  is  not  for  a  very  long  period;  assemblies  without  the 
^counterweight  of  a  strong  authority  above  them  are  a 
destined  prey  for  dissensions  and  for  the  petty  politics 
inseparable  from  dissensions. 

4.     The  Revanche  given  up 

The  Republic  was  founded  by  Gambetta  less  than 
two  months  after  the  beginning  of  the  War  of  1870  in 
an  admirable  impulse  of  patriotic  courage.  Gambetta 's 
motto  was  guerre  d  entrance,  and  the  programme  of  the 
new  Government  was  to  fight  desperately  and  never 
let  go  one  stone  of  our  fortresses  or  one  inch  of  our 
territory.  It  will  be  to  the  everlasting  honour  of 
Gambetta  that  the  battles  on  the  Loire  were  fought  to 
redeem  his  word,  and  that  France  though  defeated  was 
not  disgraced.  After  the  conclusion  of  the  peace  Gam- 
betta adopted  another  watchword  which  sounded  as 
noble:  "Unceasingly  think  of  the  Revanche,  but  never 
speak  of  it."  This  speech  again  was  dictated  by  im- 
alloyed  patriotism.  It  was  evident  that  the  all-ruling 
necessity  for  France  was  to  get  back  what  was  her  own, 
restore  by  so  doing  her  impaired  prestige  in  Europe, 
and,  from  the  mere  sentimental  point  of  view,  heal  a 
wound  which  could  not  cease  to  bleed  so  long  as  Stras- 


^o  The  Deterioration  of  France 

bourg,  and  above  all  Metz,  were  in  the  hands  of  the 

enemy. 

Gambetta's  courage  was  so  unquestionable,  the  sin- 
cerity of  his  resolve  was  so  little  open  to  doubt,  that 
for  many  months  Bismarck  had  no  other  thought  than 
to  keep  him  out  of  office.  Gambetta  at  the  head  of  the 
French  Government  in  the  then  state  of  Europe,  he  said, 
would  be  like  a  drummer  in  a  sick  man's  room. 

However,  the  election  of  1871  returned  a  Conserva- 
tive majority,  and  Gambetta  was  almost  as  isolated 
in  the  Assemblee  Nationale  as  he  had  been  in  the  last 
Imperial  Chamber.  Henceforward  he  had  to  fight  once 
more  for  his  party,  and  its  progress  in  the  country,  to 
make  up  for  lack  of  influence  in  the  Assembly.  Time 
passed,  and  when,  in  1876,  the  general  election  made 
the  Republican  leader  practically  the  arbitrator  of 
French  politics,  he  appeared  very  different  from  what 
he  had  been  supposed  to  be.  "Always  think  of  the 
Revanche,  but  never  speak  of  it,"  was  changed  into, 
"Speak  of  it  all  the  time,  whether  you  think  of  it  or 
not."  In  fact,  from  the  moment  when  his  influence  in 
the  Chamber  became  irresistible  until  his  death  in  1882, 
he  never  ceased  to  speak  of  Alsace-Lorraine  in  eloquent 
though  tumultuous  addresses,  but  he  never  initiated 
any  action  likely  to  bring  about  the  return  of  the  lost 
provinces.  As  to  his  friends,  they  did  not  seem  to  mind. 
In  a  short  time  Grevy  succeeded  MacMahon  in  the 
Presidency,  and  was  it  not  Grevy  who,  only  a  few 
months  after  the  end  of  the  war,  had  coolly  said  to  the 
Alsatian  patriot  Scheurer-Kestner,  that  repining  was 
useless,  and  France  must  give  up  Alsace-Lorraine 
without  any  hope  for  the  future? 

The  key  to  this  apparent  contradiction  is  not  difficult 
to  find.    It  is  a  principle  which  nobody  nowadays  seems 


The  Revanche  Given  Up  71 

ready  to  question,  that  a  Monarchy  is  better  adapted 
than  a  Democracy  for  the  execution  of  far-reaching 
political  plans  with  a  view  to  territorial  expansion. 
Such  plans  require  unity  of  purpose,  secrecy,  and,  above 
all,  duration  and  perseverance.  Of  all  these  require- 
ments democracies  are  destitute.  Even  if  they  were 
less  idealistic  in  their  essence,  less  inclined  to  talk — ■ 
sometimes  think — about  the  progress  of  mankind 
rather  than  the  progress  of  the  country  they  occupy, 
they  would  still  find  great  difficulty  in  carrying  out 
•positive  political  designs.  The  assemblies  representing 
them  are  too  large,  too  unstable,  too  frequently  in  con- 
tact with  the  multitude,  and  too  narrowly  dependent 
upon  it.  Now  the  multitude,  excepting  in  rare  political 
circumstances  when  unity  of  feeling  happens  to  create 
unity  of  purpose,  is  not  only  ignorant,  but  near-sighted; 
it  is  incapable  of  understanding  reasoning  based  upon 
history,  and  of  taking  other  than  immediate  interests 
into  consideration;  it  is  too  unintelligent  to  be  discri- 
minatingly selfish.  Above  all,  it  is  timorous.  The  one 
praise  which  even  the  individuals  in  the  lower  classes 
professedly  the  most  attached  to  the  past  will  gen- 
erously bestow  on  the  republican  regime  is,  at  any  rate 
the  Republic  has  one  good  point,  it  does  not  go  to  war. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  the  first  truly 
Republican  assembly  should  have  held  decidedly  paci- 
fist principles,  and  be  satisfied  with  hearing  its  most 
eloquent  orator  go  about  repeating  that  immanent 
justice  could  not  but  reclaim  the  lost  provinces  from 
their  captivity.  The  Monarchists  had  said  everywhere 
during  the  canvassing  previous  to  the  election  of  1876 
that  the  success  of  the  Republicans  would  mean  an 
immediate  danger  of  war,  but  it  was  only  a  ruse,  and 
everybody  knew  it. 


72  The  Deterioration  of  France 

The  Republican  party  seem  also  to  have  realized, 
almost  from  the  first,  the  cogency  of  a  very  simple 
though  possibly  imaginary  reasoning.  A  war,  they 
thought,  must  result  in  a  triumph  or  a  defeat.  If 
France  is  victorious,  she  will  fall  in  love  at  once  with 
the  general  to  whom  she  owes  her  victory ;  if  she  is  once 
more  conquered,  she  will  take  such  a  dislike  to  the 
regime,  which  she  will  regard  as  the  cause  of  her  mis- 
fortune, that  its  continuation  will  be  impossible. 

This  argument  is  based  on  wrong  premises.  The 
memory  of  Napoleon  the  First  haunts  everlastingly  the 
nervous  Republicans  who  dread  the  possibility  of  having 
to  love  another  dictator,  and  prevents  them  from  seeing 
to  what  extent  conditions  are  changed.  Modern 
generals  have  nothing  in  common  with  the  young  hero 
who  came  back  from  Italy  with  the  fascination  of  youth 
as  well  as  that  of  glory  about  him.  They  are  elderly 
men  and  technicians.  When  the  campaign  is  over  they 
are  generally  exhausted  by  it,  and  not  likely  to  cherish 
a  Caesar's  ambitions.  It  was  Von  Moltke  who  led  the 
Germans  to  victory  in  1870,  and  yet  if  they  had  been 
inclined  to  choose  another  master  than  the  King  of 
Prussia,  it  would  have  been  Bismarck  and  not  the 
soldier.  Few  generals  will  ever  be  more  popular  than 
Boulanger  and  Marchand  who  however  did  not  really 
imperil  the  Republic.  But  these  historical  facts  have 
no  weight  with  easily  perturbed  minds,  and  the  average 
Republican  is  endlessly  influenced  by  his  double  con- 
sciousness of  the  fact  that  France  loves  peace,  but 
adores  soldiers. 

One  other  cause,  and  possibly  the  most  important 
cause,  of  the  gradual  abandonment  of  the  Revanche  is 
to  be  found  in  the  personal  psychology  of  Gambetta. 
That  Gambetta  was  a  patriot  cannot  be  doubted,  that 


The  Revanche  Given  Up  73 

his  moral  quality  was  not  equal  to  his  impulses  is  also  a 
fact,  and  that  he  had  the  characteristic  notion  of  the 
Third  Republic — viz.,  govern  not  only  with  but  for 
one's  party — is  another  certainty.  He  unquestionably 
was  sincere  in  his  passionate  grief  at  the  loss  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suspect  that  he  was 
anything  but  sincere  every  time  he  spoke  of  their  re- 
covery in  the  twelve  years  that  followed  1870.  But  he 
was  an  epicure  with  an  unconquerable  propensity 
towards  idleness  and  pleasure;  he  was  partly  Italian, 
arid  had  the  Italian's  complexity  of  soul  and  the  Ital- 
ian's gift  for  relieving  his  emotions  by  oratory.  Five 
years'  political  agitation  between  1870  and  1875  ^^^  ^^^ 
alter  the  nature  of  his  sentiments  towards  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  but  it  opened  up  new  channels  for  his  activity. 
His  and  his  friends'  success  at  the  general  election  of 
1876  was  a  political  success,  and  he  found  himself  deep 
in  politics,  and  the  head  of  a  mere  party  five  years  after 
being  the  undisputed  representative  of  all  the  best 
French  feeling.  Perhaps  he  was  tired  of  fighting,  and 
wanted  to  reap  the  benefit  of  his  victory;  perhaps  his 
party  was  too  much  for  him — ^he  despised  its  covetous- 
ness,  and  yet  condoned  and  even  defended  it ;  add  that 
he  was  a  prey  to  women,  and  spent  the  violence  of  his 
temperament  in  sentimental  affairs.  It  has  been  con- 
tended also  that  he  was  duped  by  Bismarck,  who  ap- 
proached him  through  a  disreputable  man — Henckel 
von  Donnersmarck — and  an  even  more  disreputable 
woman — La  Paiva.  Certainly  he  did  not  reject  the 
temptation  as  much  as  he  ought  to  have  done.'  Per- 
haps he  imagined  that  there  was  enough  Machiavellism 
in  him  to  make  a  gull  even  of  Bismarck.    Perhaps  his 

^  This  question  of  the  relations  of  Gambetta  with  Bismarck  I  have 
tried  to  elucidate  in  an  article  in  the  Qimrterly  Review,  October,  191 1. 


74  The  Deterioration  of  France 

conceit  was  flattered  and  his  energy  weakened  by  the 
idea  that  he  was  negotiating  man  to  man  with  the 
greatest  diplomatist  of  the  age.  Perhaps  his  old  points 
of  view  gradually  changed,  and  in  his  desire  of  enjoying 
his  own  success  he  became  persuaded  that  Alsace- 
Lorraine  would  best  be  got  back  by  peace,  and  that  a 
commercial  treaty,  some  exchange  he  thought  possible 
in  the  future,  would  do  what  a  war  might  fail  in  bringing 
about. 

Whatever  the  causes  may  have  been,  it  is  certain  that 
the  redemption  of  the  Eastern"  provinces,  which  had 
been  the  ideal  of  the  Republic  at  its  birth,  was  gradu- 
ally dropped  by  the  Republicans,  so  that  it  became 
practically  their  characteristic  act.  To  revert  openly 
and  frequently  to  the  question  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  to 
give  the  annexed  population  renewed  assurances  that 
they  were  not  forsaken,  and  that  there  were  still  many 
patriots  on  the  look-out  for  an  opportunity  to  redeem 
them,  has  been  for  more  than  thirty  years  a  sure  sign 
that  one  is  in  opposition,  behind  Deroulede  and  Barres, 
far  away  from  the  orthodox  Republican  schools.  On 
the  contrary,  the  milk-and-water  theory  that  the  pro- 
gress of  idealism  through  democracies  will  some  day 
force  Germany  to  leave  it  to  the  annexed  provinces  to 
choose  on  which  side  of  the  Rhine  their  government 
ought  to  be,  comfortably  settled  in  most  Republican 
minds,  and  was  occasionally  displayed  in  public  without 
any  protest  from  the  responsible  leaders. 

In  that  way  the  landmark  towards  which  the  efforts 
of  France  ought  to  have  tended  continuously  after  1870, 
the  beacon  which  was  to  have  thrown  its  light  upon  the 
foreign  politics  of  the  French  Governments  and  made 
them  attentive  to  every  move  of  the  chief  European 
nations,   became   obscured,   and   other  infinitely   less 


France^s  Colonial  Policy  75 

noble  guidances  were  substituted  for  it.  A  policy  of 
what  was  called  Recollection  was  recommended,  and 
the  quieting  speech,  point  d'affaires,  was  the  shibboleth. 
The  result  was  that  the  French  imagined  that  their  love 
of  peace  was  a  condition  productive  of  peace,  and  that, 
fancying  they  had  nothing  to  fear  from  outsiders  as 
long  as  they  disclaimed  warlike  intentions,  they  lived 
among  themselves  as  if  they  had  been  alone  in  the  uni- 
verse and  spent  their  native  pugnacity  at  home. 

5.     The  Deterioration   of  France  Emphasized   by  her 
Colonial  Policy 

It  is  dangerous  to  speak  of  the  colonial  policy  of 
France  inaugurated  by  Ferry  in  1881,  and  still  at  the 
present  moment  absorbing  a  great  deal  of  her  activity. 
To  admire  or  blame  it  without  careful  discrimination 
is  an  injustice  or  a  piece  of  levity. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  Colonial  expansion  of 
France,  though  advocated  by  a  patriot,  was  encouraged 
by  Bismarck.  The  Prussian  statesman  saw  in  it  a 
diversion  from  the  thoughts  of  Revanche,  and  hoped 
that  the  African  ambitions  of  France  would  alienate 
Italy  from  her.  But  it  is  also  a  fact  that  the  Protective 
legislation  prevalent  in  Europe  towards  1880,  and  the 
unexpected  presence  of  German  and  American  goods 
on  markets  where  they  had  never  been  seen  before, 
made  it  imperative  for  French  commerce  to  seek  new 
openings.  The  finance  of  France  was  rapidly  recuperat- 
ing, the  bas  de  laine  was  full,  and,  unless  one  wanted 
its  millions  and  billions  to  be  absorbed  more  and  more 
by  foreign  and  even  hostile  enterprise,  it  was  urgent 
that  channels  should  be  found  for  them.  Had  not 
Prevost-Paradol  suggested  in  a  less  matter-of-fact  spirit 


76  The  Deterioration  of  France 

that  France  should  settle  in  Algeria  and  colonize  it  by 
other  than  vicarious  methods?  Surely  he  would  have 
approved  of  plans  for  an  Imperial  development, 
and  in  themselves  such  plans  were  nothing  but 
wise. 

It  is  evidently  an  injustice  therefore  to  say  that  the 
Republicans  only  went  to  Tunis,  the  Tonkin,  and  Mada- 
gascar, later  on  to  the  Soudan,  Congo,  and  Morocco,  to 
avoid  going  back  to  Strasbourg,  and  to  find  in  those  new 
settlements  enough  lucrative  positions  to  satisfy  the 
greed  of  their  party.  Nothing  prevented  French  diplo- 
macy from  going  round  to  Alsace  by  Indo-China.  On 
the  contrary,  the  French,  with  the  encouragement  of 
success  on  far-away  shores,  the  revelation  of  military 
and  administrative  capacities  in  men  who  had  otherwise 
languished  in  idleness,  would  probably  have  felt  bolder 
as  they  became  stronger,  and  in  due  time  a  chance 
would  have  offered  for  them  to  wash  out  of  their  history 
the  stain  Which  cannot  stay  there.  But  all  this  ought 
to  have  been  done  with  the  everlasting  purpose  of  re- 
establishing the  European  equilibrium  altered  at  Ver- 
sailles and  Frankfort,  and  such  an  ambition  required 
conditions  which  in  fact  we  find  have  been  lacking.  It 
presupposed  enough  moralizing  of  the  country  to  bring 
about  repopulation  instead  of  increasing  the  rate  of 
depopulation,  and  this  could  only  be  done  by  a  careful 
school  and  religious  legislation  along  with  encouraging 
economic  measures.  It  also  presupposed  the  anticipa- 
tion of  conflicts  on  far-away  shores  as  well  as  in  Europe, 
instead  of  the  apathetic  certainty  that  colonizing  was 
the  surest  method  to  avoid  frictions.  Nothing  could  be 
accomplished  without  a  diplomacy,  an  army,  and,  to 
begin  with,  a  navy  of  the  first  rank;  and,  in  order  to  use 
these  instruments  properly,  a  great  deal  of  the  deter- 


France's  Colonial  Policy  77 

mination,  unity,  and  self-sacrifice  which  caused  the 
success  of  the  Japanese  in  1905  was  necessary.  Such  a 
combination,  the  critics  of  the  Republic  insist,  is  im- 
possible in  a  Democracy,  but  is  almost  easy  under  a 
Monarch.  Have  we  not  seen  the  German  Emperor 
create  in  a  few  years  a  navy  second  only  to  one  in  the 
world?  Is  it  not  a  fact,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  power- 
ful navy  of  the  United  States  may  be  rendered  useless 
by  a  President  whose  ideology  should  hamper  the  more 
virile  impulses  of  commerce? 

Whatever  may  be  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  Demo- 
cracy in  other  countries,  it  is  certain  that  the  Republi- 
can Parliaments,  unsupported  by  the  public  spirit  and 
poorly  guided  by  merely  nominal  Governments,  were 
unequal  to  the  task  set  for  them.  Exclusively  attentive 
to  their  divisions — to  what  Jules  Ferry  contemptuously 
called  their  pot  au  feu — they  let  well-meaning  but  iux 
competent  Ministers  send  the  French  Navy  to  rack  and 
ruin.  So  while  they  accepted  a  Colonial  policy  leading 
evidently  to  a  Colonial  Empire,  they  suffered  the  only 
instrument  likely  to  make  a  Colonial  Empire  of  any. 
use,  to  be  broken  in  their  own  hands. 

Besides,  it  was  childish  to  imagine  that  a  policy  of 
recollection  and  non-interference  could  be  maintained 
while  a  Colonial  policy  was  being  carried  on.  The 
danger  of  war  became  immediate  the  moment  the  ambi- 
tions of  France  were  openly  declared;  and  as  France 
could  not  run  the  risk  of  a  war  alone  against  any  of  her 
more  powerful  neighbours,  she  was  compelled  to  seek 
or  accept  alliances.  Now,  entering  upon  any  system  of 
alliances  amounted  to  giving  up  the  attitude  of  non- 
interference adopted  since  the  establishment  of  the 
Republic,  and  being  ready  to  follow  a  Hne  entirely  at 
variance  with  the  democratic  principles. 


78  The  Deterioration  of  France 

6.    Imperfections  of  the  System  of  A  lliances 

Alliances  may  be  the  results  of  international  sym- 
pathies, but  when  they  are  nothing  e'se  they  are 
dangerous.  Certainly  the  sympathies  of  Napoleon  the 
Third  for  Italy,  which  were  of  an  eminently  sentimental 
order,  were  of  little  use  to  France.  Agreements  ought 
to  be  concluded  with  great  precautions  and  watched 
with  even  greater  attention.  The  moment  they  create 
a  condition  of  confiding  apathy  in  a  nation,  they  are 
not  only  a  sign  but  even  an  element  of  decadence.  Now 
it  is  difficult  for  democracies  to  derive  from  an  alliance 
the  advantages  which  it  is  in  its  nature  to  procure,  and 
for  the  French  Republic,  as  the  constitutional  laws  of 
1875  make  it,  it  is  almost  impossible.  The  representa- 
tive body  being  the  image  of  the  multitude  can  hardly 
face  the  possibility  of  a  war  with  sufficient  determina- 
tion, and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Foreign  Minister, 
being  under  the  perpetual  supervision  of  the  representa- 
tives, cannot  act  with  proper  secrecy  unless  he  does  so 
by  unconstitutional  methods.  This  is  not  all;  the 
Foreign  Minister  is  as  apt  to  be  displaced  and  replaced 
as  his  less  important  colleagues,  and  the  danger  of  a 
lack  of  continuity  is  constant. 

All  these  difficulties  were  only  too  plentifully  illus- 
trated by  the  diplomatic  history  of  France  imtil  quite 
recent  years.  Its  two  chief  moments  are  characterized 
by  the  names  of  M.  Hanotaux  and  M.  Delcasse,  who 
followed  different  methods,  but  came  to  alarmingly 
similar  results. 

It  is  an  unfortunate  fact  connected  with  the 
tenure  of  office  by  M.  Hanotaux,  that  the  official 
promulgation  of  the  alliance  with  Russia  practically 
coincided  with  the  most  unpleasant  pacifist  demon- 


Imperfections  of  Alliances  79 

stration  that  France  had  to  witness  after  the  Third 
Republic.  The  alliance  dates  from  June  10,  1895,  and 
just  a  week  later,  on  June  i8th,  the  French  fleet  was 
represented  at  the  inauguration  of  the  Kiel  canal, 
largely  built  with  the  money  paid  over  by  France 
to  Germany  after  1870.  M.  Hanotaux  was  a  disciple 
and  an  admirer  of  Gambetta,  and  it  would  seem  as  if 
the  action  of  the  younger  man  proved  that  his  prede- 
cessor actually  wanted  a  reconciliation  with  Prussia, 
although  he  did  not  wish  for  an  agreement  with  Russia. 
At  any  rate,  people  generally  construed  an  official  step 
of  such  solemnity  in  the  light  of  a  recognition  of  the 
Frankfort  Treaty  and  a  final  abandonment  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine.  This  was  hard  indeed,  but  nothing  is  ever 
really  final  in  poHtical  history.  What  one  century 
does  another  will  undo,  and  no  Frenchman — not  even 
among  the  Socialists — doubts  that  some  day,  in  spite 
of  all  the  pacifist  theories  or  diplomatic  blank  lies, 
Alsace-Lorraine  will  come  back  to  its  former  possessors. 
So,  one  could  take  refuge  against  the  present  reality  in 
hopes  for  the  future,  and  especially  in  the  hope  of 
promptly  seeing  the  Colonial  Empire  of  France  founded 
and  prosperous. 

Viewed  otherwise  than  sentimentally,  the  plan  con- 
ceived by  M.  Hanotaux  could  not  be  denied  greatness. 
It  was  a  bold  and  effective  design  to  draw  a  line 
of  French  influence  across  the  whole  width  of  Africa, 
and  the  idea  served  by  such  a  man  as  Marchand  will  be 
remembered  in  history  as  of  epic  daring.  But  M. 
Hanotaux,  who  had  had  to  keep  from  French  opinion 
that  the  Russian  alliance  involved  some  sort  of  veiled 
entente  with  Germany,  had  also  had  to  keep  from  it — 
and  consequently  keep  from  the  Chamber — that  Mar- 
chand's  march  was  not  a  mere  explorer's  expedition, 


8o  The  Deterioration  of  France 

but  had  a  military  and  diplomatic  character  as  well. 
When  the  Fashoda  incident  became  known,  there  was 
a  universal  surprise  and  some  nervousness,  but  the  fear 
of  a  war  lasted  only  a  few  days.  How  could  M.  Hano- 
taux  defend  his  point  of  view  when  his  colleague  of 
the  navy  had  no  vessels  to  support  his  arguments? 
The  consequence  of  the  first  effort  of  France  to  get 
out  of  her  isolation,  therefore,  was  to  show  to  the 
world  that  she  could  still  conceive  the  designs  of  a 
nation  of  the  first  rank,  but,  owing  to  the  subservience 
of  her  governments  to  opinion,  she  had  only  the 
strength  of  a  nation  of  the  second  rank  to  carry  them  out. 

Exactly  similar  was  the  experience  of  M.  Hanotaux's 
successor,  M.  Delcasse. 

Of  course  it  was  a  new  departure.  M.  Delcass6 
had  none  of  the  intellectual  admiration  of  M.  Hanotaux 
for  the  culture  of  Germany,  and  his  patriotism  had  its 
roots  deeper  in  popular  ground.  He  had  no  notion  of 
the  possibiHty  of  intimidating  or  coaxing  Germany  in 
the  far-away  future  into  giving  back  or  exchanging 
Alsace-Lorraine  against  some  settlement  overseas. 
His  secret  hope  was  to  insulate  Germany  from  the  rest 
of  Europe  by  a  chain  of  apparently  peaceful  agree- 
ments, and  when  the  time  came  to  make  her  feel 
that,  strong  as  she  thought  herself,  she  could  not  resist 
the  justice  of  France's  claims  supported  by  a  tremend- 
ous coalition.  Here  again,  there  is  the  beauty  of  a 
patriotic  and  coherent  conception.  Perhaps  its  author 
forgot  that  the  parties  to  the  agreements  he  signed 
were  more  attentive  to  their  own  ambitions  than  to  the 
prospects  he  himself  cherished,  but  the  very  simplicity 
of  such  an  idea  was  a  force  in  itself,  and  its  gradual 
accomplishment  created  in  Europe  an  atmosphere  of 
respect  for  France  which  was  another  element  of  success. 


Imperfections  of  Alliances  8i 

It  is  therefore  no  unforgivable  vice  in  M.  Delcasse's 
plan  that  it  contradicted  flatly  that  of  M.  Hanotaux, 
for  the  diplomacy  of  every  country  offers  similar  pieces 
of  discontinuity.  But  the  error  of  M.  Delcasse,  like 
that  of  M.  Hanotaux,  was  to  prepare  war  without 
preparing  for  war  or  without  giving  due  notice  to  the 
responsible  persons  that  they  had  to  prepare  for  war. 
We  shall  see  by  and  by  that  the  seven  years  of  M. 
Delcasse's  office  (i  898-1 905)  coincided  with  the  Drey- 
fusist  agitation  and  with  the  Government  of  M.  Combes 
and  of  the  Radicals  of  the  narrowest  observation — 
that  is  to  say,  the  period  in  French  history  during 
which  mere  words  were  treated  the  most  respectfully, 
and  views  were  sufficient  food  for  the  minds  of  politi- 
cians. War  appeared  as  a  barbarous  impossibility, 
and  the  chief  preoccupation  of  the  Ministers  of  War 
and  Marine  was  to  civilize  the  army  and  navy,  turn 
ships  and  barracks  into  institutions  for  the  civic  per- 
fecting of  young  Frenchmen,  and,  in  short,  prepare  the 
world  for  universal  peace.  The  policy  of  M.  Delcasse 
was  presented  all  the  time  as  the  surest  guarantee  of 
peace,  and  he  alone  knew  that  its  inevitable  issue  must 
be  the  professedly  impossible  conflagration.  The  un- 
bounded surprise  which  took  place  in  1905  was  the 
result,  and  although  it  will  always  be  regarded  as  the 
most  fortunate  awakening  for  France,  it  was  accom- 
panied with  such  a  humiliation  of  the  Foreign  Minister 
as  all  good  Frenchmen,  whether  his  friends  or  his  foes, 
felt  with  him.  His  own  disappointment  was  more 
than  bitter.  One  of  his  friends  concluded  that  France 
was  doomed,  and  wrote  a  book  the  title  of  which  alone 
was  an  avowal  of  despair. '  All  that  ought  to  have 
been  concluded  was  that  no  foreign  policy  is  possible 

^La  France  qui  Meurt,  by  A.  Ebray,  1910. 
6 


82  The  Deterioration  of  France 

to  a  country  whose  constitution  vests  authority  in  an 
Assembly  and  not  in  Government,  and  makes  it  impera- 
tive for  the  Foreign  Minister  either  to  be  a  nonentity 
or  to  conceal  his  action  from  the  politicians  who  some 
day  will  be  his  judges  and  the  arbitrators  of  his  fate. 
To  conclude,  the  policy  of  alliances,  as  it  was  carried 
on  during  the  greatest  portion  of  the  existence  of  the 
Third  Republic,  practically  until  the  military  revival 
of  the  country,  was  in  contradiction  with  the  nature 
of  the  French  Democracy,  and  yet  had  all  the  appear- 
ances of  being  perfectly  at  one  with  it.  It  secretly 
meant  war,  but  superficially  it  was — and  loudly  pro- 
fessed to  be — the  safeguard  of  peace.  Who  could  attack 
France  when  the  millions  of  the  Russian  army  or  the 
powerful  fleets  of  England  were  ready  for  her  defence? 
The  real  reading  of  the  situation  ought,  of  course,  to 
have  been :  We  are  involved  in  the  interests  and  conse- 
quently the  vicissitudes  of  other  nations,  therefore  we 
must  be  day  and  night  on  the  look-out  and  prepared 
against  every  surprise.  But  this  attitude,  and  politi- 
cians know  it,  would  promptly  bring  about  a  state  of 
affairs  practically  nullifying  the  constitution  which 
makes  them  supreme.  Instinctively  and  unconsci- 
ously a  country  feeling  the  vicinity  of  danger  will  not 
leave  its  security  to  the  pleasure  of  a  divided  and 
irresponsible  collectivity — it  is  sure  to  seek  better 
watchmen  and  braver  defenders.  So  the  selfishness 
and  levity  of  Parliament,  as  well  as  the  impossible 
position  of  French  Foreign  Ministers,  combine  to  keep 
the  truth  from  the  nation.  And  what  is  the  result? 
That  the  alliances,  instead  of  acting  as  a  tonic,  act 
as  an  opiate,  turning  the  public  feeling  and  the  public 
mind  from  all-important  realities,  weakening  their  sense 
of  responsibility,  and  centring  the  national  pride  upon 


Politicians  of  Third  Republic  83 

that  morbid  joy  of  having  been  great  once  by  power  and 
of  being  great  yet  by  culture  and  art,  which  is  a  well- 
known  sign  of  the  decadence  of  nations. 

7.     The  Deterioration  of  France  Exemplified  in  the 
Politicians  of  the  Third  Republic 

Compared  with  their  opponents  in  the  Imperial 
Assemblies,  the  handful  of  Republicans — Gambetta, 
Jules  Simon,  Jules  Favre — were  the  glorious  minority. 
They  had  talent  and  courage,  and  they  represented  the 
future— the  beautiful  future  which  the  popular  mind 
pictured  to  itself  under  such  glowing  colours.  Nobody 
doubted  that  an  Assembly  of  such  men  would  be  far 
superior  morally  to  any  Parliament  elected  through 
official  influence  under  the  Second  Empire. 

During  the  war  the  same  men  stood  for  heroism — 
mad  heroism  it  is  true,  but  none  the  less  sublime.  The 
violence  of  their  resolution  scared  the  demoralized 
country,  and  the  dread  it  inspired  caused  the  success  of 
the  Monarchists  in  the  election  of  1871.  When,  in 
1876,  and  especially  in  1878,  they  became  the  majority, 
and  their  influence  could  hardly  be  challenged,  things 
changed.  There  were  two  great  ideas  to  defend: 
the  necessity  of  the  recovery  of  Alsace-Lorraine  and 
liberty  of  conscience.  Both  seemed  essentially  Republi- 
can ideas;  religious  freedom  and  the  integrity  of  the 
territory  being  dogmas  with  the  democratic  theorist. 
But  the  moral  falling  off  of  Gambetta  which  I  men- 
tioned above  was  only  one  case  in  a  thousand,  and  the 
politicians  who  succeeded  one  another  in  the  Repub- 
lican Parliaments  felt  at  once  that  liberty  of  conscience 
was  a  political  danger  and  that  the  vindication  of  the 
patriotic  claims  on  the  Eastern  provinces  would  cause  a 


84  The  Deterioration  of  France 

timorousness  in  the  minds  of  the  electors  by  which  they 
could  only  be  losers.  In  consequence  they  gave  up 
these  two  noble  causes  to  the  opposition. 

What  was  left  to  them  to  give  an  appearance  of 
superiority  to  their  side?  They  have  repeated  it  so 
often  that  we  ought  to  know.  They  plumed  themselves 
everlastingly  on  giving  France  three  great  blessings — 
viz.,  civic  freedom,  international  peace,  and  schools  for 
the  poor.  But  are  these  essentially  Republican  con- 
quests? By  no  means;  they  exist  in  Belgium,  in  Italy, 
in  Scandinavia,  even  largely  in  Germany,  to  say  nothing 
of  course  of  England.  Besides,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  civic  freedom  represented  by  the  suffrage  is  more 
the  shadow  than  the  thing,  that  peace  at  the  cost  of 
dignity  is  a  perpetual  danger  of  war,  because — as  the 
German  proverb  says — "him  who  makes  himself  a  sheep 
the  wolf  will  eat,"  and  as  to  schools  it  is  a  melancholy 
fact  that  after  forty  years  about  six  in  a  hundred 
French  soldiers  are  illiterate,  and  the  schools,  instead 
of  being  instruments  of  civilization,  have  been  turned 
into  weapons  of  unbelief.  From  the  first,  the  true 
Republicans  in  the  French  Parliaments  have  been  not 
the  champions  of  peace,  but  the  panegyrists  of  ease; 
and  this  opened  a  gulf  between  what  they  were  sup- 
posed to  be  and  what  they  really  were,  between  their 
ancestors  of  1792 — bred  on  antiquity  and  rising  quickly 
though  tumultuously  to  the  sublime — and  themselves, 
even  between  the  generous  utopianism  of  their 
predecessors  of  1848  and  their  own  coddling 
wisdom. 

Not  that  the  Republican  bourgeois  who  sit  in  the 
Chamber  are  cowards.  M.  de  Mun,  who  has  no  special 
reason  for  flattering  them,  has  admirably  narrated'  a 

*  Le  GauloiSj  September  21,  1905. 


Politicians  of  Third  Republic  85 

memorable  sitting  of  the  Chamber  in  which  one  could 
see  what  they  are  capable  of  at  a  pinch,  when  the 
French  spirit  in  them  is  roused. 

It  was  in  February  1887,  when  M.  Ren6  Goblet  was 
Premier  and  Boulanger  Minister  of  War.  The  Schnoebel^ 
incident  had  recently  taken  place,  and  the  language  of 
Bismarck  was  becoming  day  after  day  more  irritating.  In 
the  meantime  the  national  factories  were  at  work  on  the 
Lebel  gun.  In  the  afternoon  of  the  8th  the  Premier  un- 
expectedly demanded  a  supplementary  fund  for  the  speedy 
completion  of  the  work.  Everybody  realized  immediately 
that  the  situation  must  be  serious;  the  sitting  was  sus- 
pended, and  the  deputies,  of  whatever  political  opinion, 
pressed  round  the  Prime  Minister.  Yes,  M.  Goblet  said, 
the  situation  was  serious.  The  deputies  were  called  back 
into  the  House.  lii  a  moment  all  the  seats  were  full.  The 
public  tribunes  were  overcrowded,  and  the  diplomats* 
special  tribune  was  full  of  ambassadors;  the  deep  silence 
oppressed  everybody  and  the  universal  emotion  was  visible. 
The  Speaker,  M.  Floquet,  stood  up,  holding  in  his  hands, 
which  slightly  trembled,  the  bill  under  consideration.  His 
voice  sounded  through  the  room  as  he  read  the  first  chapter. 
When  it  was  over,  the  Speaker  put  the  usual  question: 
Has  anybody  anything  to  say?  but  the  silence  remained 
unbroken.  Then  he  spoke  the  other  usual  sentence:  Let 
those  who  wish  to  support  the  motion  raise  their  hands. 
Immediately  five  hundred  arms  were  thrown  up  at  once, 
and  I  can  remember  Bishop  Freppel,  who  sat  next  me, 
making  the  same  gesture  with  a  rapidity  recalling  the 
soldier's  promptitude  and  with  the  fire  of  Revanche  in 
his  eyes.  Chapter  after  chapter  was  thus  passed  through, 
the  banal  gesture  at  the  end  of  each  one  being  repeated  as  a 
sacred  rite.  It  seemed  as  i:  the  soul  of  France  had  taken 
possession  of  these  hundreds  of  men.  The  people  in  the 
tribunes  were  breathless  with  emotion,  the  ambassadors 
looked  on  serious  and  surprised.     The  moment  the  last 


86  The  Deterioration  of  France 

division  was  over,  the  House  became  once  more  empty  in 
a  twinkling. 

If  a  French  Assembly  even  of  inferior  political  quality 
should  ever  become  incapable  of  an  act  of  courage  like 
this,  France  would  not  be  France  any  more,  and  I  should 
not  be  writing  this  book.  But  courage  of  the  exalted 
order  is  not  in  daily  demand  in  a  Parliament,  and  the 
inferiority  of  the  politicians  of  the  Third  Republic  has 
had  more  occasions  than  their  fortitude  to  attract 
attention.  This  inferiority  is  caused,  partly,  as  I  have 
said  above,  by  the  excessive  dependence  of  the  repre- 
sentative upon  his  constituents  and  the  consequent 
habit  of  seeing  their  interests  and  considering  their 
wishes  before  the  interests  and  wishes  of  the  country; 
also  by  the  lack  of  political  guidance  for  which  the 
Constitution  is  responsible.  But  even  with  a  better 
mode  of  election  and  a  better  Constitution,  the  politi- 
cians of  the  Third  Republic  would  have  suffered  from 
an  original  fault  which  nothing  can  compensate — that 
is,  the  notion  that  politics  is  a  trade  like  any  other, 
with  its  risks,  its  difficulties,  its  expenses,  and  con- 
sequently the  blemishes  attached  to  all  modem  pro- 
fessions. The  politician  is  of  very  much  the  same 
kind  as  the  financier  with  whom  he  is  in  daily  inter- 
course; his  moral  standard  is  limited  by  professional 
necessities. 

In  his  constituency  the  deputy  who  labels  himself 
truly  Republican  and  denies  the  ticket  to  men  outside 
his  party  is  seldom  esteemed.  He  need  not,  like  a  mem- 
ber of  the  English  Parliament,  see  his  constituents  very 
frequently — in  fact  he  is  often  satisfied,  when  he  has  the 
Prefect  on  his  side,  with  visiting  them  every  four  years, 
just  before  the  election,  or  possibly  at  some  celebration 


Politicians  of  Third  Republic  87 

— ^but  he  is  in  frequent  relation  with  half  a  dozen  men 
from  each  parish  who  are  not  by  any  means  the  pick  of 
the  population.  When  people  outside  this  charmed 
circle  happen  to  speak  of  it,  it  is  seldom  without  a  wink 
or  a  shrug.  In  short,  the  deputy  is  not  respected,  and 
when  the  Prefect  comes  round  for  the  conseil  de  revision 
of  the  recruits,  or  some  important  magistrate  is  sent 
down  by  the  Cour  d'Appely  the  effect  produced  by  their 
presence  is  very  different.  The  deputies  of  the  Second 
Empire,  "creatures  of  the  power'*  as  they  were,  made 
an  incomparably  better  impression.  Certainly  they 
were  delighted  to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  Emperor's 
Government,  and  it  was  somewhat  to  be  regretted  that 
the  ''white  poster" — the  sign  of  official  recommenda- 
tion— made  their  election  almost  compulsory,  but  they 
were  gentlemen^  who  did  not  care  for  the  material 
advantages  which  might  accrue  to  them  from  being  at 
the  Palais-Bourbon,  and  if  they  made  interest  in  Paris 
for  some  local  improvement  it  was  not  out  of  base 
motives.  No  French  Assembly,  since  the  clamorous 
Sans-culottes,  has  been  in  its  general  appearance  so  near 
vulgarity  as  the  Chambers  of  Deputies  elected  after 
1875.  The  demagogism  of  1848  was  elegant  in  com- 
parison; its  utopianism  was  pure,  and  the  presence  of 
Lamartine,  Louis  Blanc,  and  even  Armand  Marrast 
lent  it  gentlemanliness.  One  understands  the  feeling  of 
Mrs.  Craven — she  was  born  La  Ferronnays — who,  when 
she  occasionally  came  back  to  her  native  country  after 
1878,  used  to  say  that  France  in  her  new  state  appeared 
to  her  as  a  lady  of  noble  rank  who  had  married  her 
footman. 

It  is  useless  to  recall  in  great  detail  facts  proving  that 

'  Half  the  members  of  the  Chamber  and  nearly  two  thirds  in  the 
Senate  were  titled  men,  and  there  were  very  few  professional  politicians. 


88  The  Deterioration  of  France 

the  professional  politician  is  not  scrupulous;  the  scandal 
connected  with  the  name  of  Wilson — the  son-in-law  of 
President  Grevy — the  Panama  affair,  the  financial  opera- 
tions known  as  the  Tirard  and  Rouvier  conversions,  are 
classic  instances  which  are  enough  to  warrant  every 
suspicion  when  one  hears  of  minor  or  less  public  offences ; 
I  shall  have  an  occasion  to  say  later  that  the  crafty 
manner — rather  than  the  fact  itself — in  which  the 
deputies  voted  for  themselves  a  handsome  old-age 
pension — a,  most  mysterious  transaction — and  raised 
their  salary  by  two  thirds,  greatly  diminished  even  the 
poor  consideration  they  had  enjoyed  so  far. 

If  the  Third  Republic  has  produced  but  few  men  of 
great  civic  virtue,  it  has  not  produced  many  who  were 
remarkable  either  for  their  eloquence  or  their  political 
capacities.  A  comparison  of  the  Republican  orators 
since  Gambetta,  with  those  of  the  Restoration  and  of 
the  reign  ot  Louis  Philippe,  would  be  crushingly  in 
favour  of  the  latter ;  it  is  a  sign  of  the  times  that  Jaures 
should  have  acquired  the  reputation  he  enjoys,  mostly, 
it  is  true,  among  those  who  never  heard  him.  There 
was  a  great  deal  more  of  the  cymbal  than  of  the  clarion 
in  him. 

Statesmanship  is  even  more  scarce  than  eloquence. 
In  these  days,  when  international  politics  are  so  im- 
portant that  they  should  be  a  constant  subject  of 
meditation  for  true  patriots,  we  do  find  a  few  deputies 
who  can  hold  forth  plausibly  enough  about  these  in- 
tricate questions — there  are  even  those  who  have  built 
for  themselves  a  sort  of  system,  and  stick  to  it  without 
too  much  inconsistency;  but  where  is  the  voice  which 
at  intervals  ought  to  remind  the  French  of  their  national 
duty  with  enough  knowledge  of  the  situation  of  Europe 
and  enough  authority  to  silence  mere  babblers  and 


Politicians  of  Third  Republic  89 

make  the  country  feel  united  in  one  great  patriotic  im- 
pulse? Where  is  the  French  Cavour? — certainly  neither 
M.  de  Freycinet,  nor  M.  Hanotaux,  nor  even  M.  Del- 
casse  can  hope  to  have  statues  erected  to  their  memory. 

A  general  tinge  of  banality  has  been  attached  to 
all  that  the  Republic  has  produced  until  quite  recent 
years.  The  roll  of  its  Premiers,  when  one  reads  it  over 
from  the  first  days,  sounds  like  a  list  of  incarnations 
of  mediocrity.  Even  the  Presidents  are  painful  to 
remember.  Certainly  the  first,  Thiers,  was  a  great 
Frenchman,  and  the  last,  M.  Poincare,  once  gave  hopes 
of  being  one ;  but  all  the  rest,  excepting  MacMahon,  who 
had  a  brilliant  past  and  was  the  soul  of  honesty,  were 
ordinary  men,  chosen  for  their  very  lack  of  individual- 
ity. Placed  beside  the  American  Presidents,  they  cut  a 
sorry  figure,  and  yet  the  United  States  does  not  devote 
its  best  men  to  politics.  It  is  melancholy  to  reflect  that 
if  the  celebrities  of  the  army,  or  of  the  bar,  or  of  lit- 
erature, and  even  of  journalism  were  compared  with 
those  of  the  successive  Republican  Parliaments,  the 
comparison  would  be  more  than  disadvantageous  for 
politicians. 

This  is,  as  often  happens,  both  the  result  and  the 
continuing  cause  of  an  absurd  paradox.  It  would  seem 
that  the  Chamber,  being  the  chief  and  practically  the 
only  governing  influence  in  France,  the  best  men  in  the 
country  ought  to  convene  there.  But  it  being  pre- 
posterous nonsense  that  a  legislating  Assembly  should 
have  power  to  the  exclusion  of  the  real  Government, 
the  best  men  either  will  not  seek  this  Assembly,  or  are 
eliminated  from  it,  or  become  deteriorated  in  it.  At 
all  events  the  history  of  France  in  the  last  forty  years 
has  been  that  of  the  deterioration  of  deputies  as  much 
as  that  of  deterioration  by  deputies,  and  the  lack  of  any. 


90  The  Deterioration  of  France 

real  merit  in  the  rulers  of  the  country  has  been  a 
powerful  element  of  demoralization. 

8.    Anti-Clericalism  the  only  Continuous  Policy 

The  first  great  battle  that  the  Republic  fought  was 
against  MacMahon  and  the  Monarchists,  and  it  was 
promptly  won;  after  the  election  of  1878  there  was  little 
question  in  the  country  of  any  strong  anti-constitutional 
opposition;  the  Monarchists  were  as  divided  as  ever, 
and  when  the  deat;h  of  the  Comte  de  Chambord  perforce 
united  them,  there  was  still  the  division  between  the 
Orleanists  and  Imperialists.  The  second  battle  was 
against  what  was  called  Clericalism — that  is  to  say,  the 
interference  of  the  clergy  in  the  politics  of  the  country; 
The  clergy,  it  is  true,  had  been  Republican  in  1848,  and 
the  difficulties  which  the  Emperor  had  had  with  the 
Pope  owing  to  the  Italian  question  had  not  contributed 
to  make  the  bishops  and  their  priests  Imperialists.  So 
the  tendency  of  the  clergy  would  have  been  towards  a 
Republic  if  the  word  had  had  the  same  meaning  that  it 
had  when  Lamartine  used  it.  But  with  different  people 
the  word  had  taken  another  signification,  and  the  old 
alUance  of  the  Throne  and  the  Altar  was  revived. 

It  was  natural  therefore  that  the  Republicans, 
whether  unbelievers  or  the  reverse,  should  look  askance 
at  any  possibiHty  of  the  clergy  inspiring  the  politics 
of  their  flocks,  and  there  were  reasons  for  fearing  lest 
they  should,  for  the  clergy,  though  not  Imperialists, 
had  been  favoured  by  the  Empire,  and  their  political 
influence  had  in  many  places  been  considerable.  The 
famous  speech  of  Gambetta,  "Clericalism  is  the  tru6 
enemy,"  ought  therefore  to  be  replaced  in  its  environ- 
ment, and  only  a  political  meaning  put  upon  it.    Gam- 


Anti-Clericalism  the  Only  Policy        91 

betta  was  no  believer,  but  he  was  no  antagonist  to 
Christianity  either,  and  it  is  ignorance  of  history  alone 
that  will  quote  his  oft-repeated  words  in  the  same 
breath  as  Voltaire's  no  less  famous  ecrasons  Vinfdme, 
His  true  meaning  appeared  clearly  in  another  watch- 
word: "Anti-clericalism  is  good  at  hom6,  but  it  would 
not  do  to  export  it."  Gambetta  fully  realized  that 
French  influence  overseas  was  indistinguishable  from 
Catholic  propagandism,  and  would  have  been  more 
than  satisfied  if  he  had  seen  the  clergy  keep  away 
from  politics  as  they  did  under  Leo  XIII. 

Were  the  men  in  Gambetta's  immediate  entourage 
in  the  same  state  of  mind?  Unfortunately  not.  Ranc, 
Brlsson,  Clemenceau,  Paul  Bert,  even  Ferry,  even  a 
highly-cultivkted  man  like  Challemel-Lacour,  were 
opposed  to  clerical  influence,  not  merely  for  political 
but  for  philosophical  reasons  as  well.  They  were  full  of 
the  spirit  of  the  Empire,  but  they  had  all  of  them  been 
educated  by  men  who  had  preserved  the  Voltairian 
tradition  of  1840,  and  their  admiration  for  Renan  was, 
as  I  said  above,  admiration  for  the  personal  enemy  of 
Christ,  and  not  at  all  for  the  elegant  dilettante  we  now 
take  him  to  have  been.  So  the  effort  made  to  keep  the 
political  influence  of  the  Church  within  bounds  soon 
became  transformed  into  antagonism  against  the 
Church  herself.  Less  than  two  years  after  the  im- 
doubted  triumph  of  the  Republican  party,  the  Jesuits 
had  been  turned  out  of  their  schools  and  made  outlaws. 
It  cannot  be  questioned  either  that  the  law  permitting 
divorce  was  passed,  less  from  social  or  sentimental 
considerations,  as  in  America,  for  instance,  than  be- 
cause its  promulgation  would  be  construed  by  the 
popula-r  mind  as  a  startling  defeat  of  the  Church.  At 
the  same  time  an  agitation  was  begun  against  the 


92  The  Deterioration  of  France 

influence  of  the  Pope  in  a  country  not  his  own,  through 
a  clergy  only  national  in  appearance,  and  the  arguments 
which  were  to  bring  about  the  separation  of  Church  and 
State  began  to  be  circulated  by  the  Radical  press. 

Yet  this  was  only  a  beginning.  It  soon  appeared  that 
a  great  anti-clerical  influence,  which  about  1880  ac- 
quired a  power  it  had  never  possessed  before,  wanted 
more  decisive  steps.  It  has  taken  years  to  convince 
people  who  fear  to  be  victims  to  exaggeration,  especially 
in  England,  that  the  influence  of  the  French  Freemasons 
had  any  effect  upon  the  politics  of  their  country,  and 
that  it  was  of  a  decidedly  anti-Christian  nature.  To-day 
one  meets  with  less  incredulity.  Official  documents 
have  proved  to  evidence  that  Freemasons  are  and  have 
throughout  the  history  of  the  Third  Republic  been 
numerous  in  the  Chamber  and  Senate,  that  they  in- 
variably vote  solid,  and  that  if  any  of  them  presume 
to  dissent  from  the  rest  they  are  excommunicated,  as 
M.  Millerand  was  in  1904 ;  it  is  also  evident  from  matter- 
of-fact  comparisons  of  the  resolutions  passed  in  the 
yearly  Masonic  Conventions  with  contemporary  Par- 
liamentary proceedings  that  the  legislation  of  France 
has  often  been  prepared  in  the  Lodges.  The  essentially 
anti-religious  character  of  the  Masonic  influence  appears 
no  less  clearly  from  the  perusal  of  Masonic  official 
publications,  and  above  all  of  the  most  recent  Masonic 
Ritual.  Until  1876  the  name  of  the  Grand  Architect 
appeared  in  the  French  edition  of  that  book  as  it  did 
in  the  versions  printed  in  other  languages.  After  that 
date  this  name  disappeared  from  the  Ritual,  and  the  fact 
was  so  obviously  meant  as  an  open  declaration  of  athe- 
ism that  the  English  and  Scottish  Lodges  shortly  after 
gave  injunctions  to  their  members  to  keep  away  from 
the  French  Lodges  when  they  came  to  the  Continent. 


Anti-Clericalism  the  Only  Policy        93 

In  this  spirit,  then,  and  with  this  exceptional  Power, 
has  Masonic  influence  been  exercised  in  France  until 
scandalous  revelations  concerned  with  the  espionage  of 
officers  by  Freemasons  made  it  less  effective,  or  at  all 
events  less  brazen.. 

The  chief  effort  of  the  Freemasons  and  their  friends 
was  turned  at  first  against  the  teaching  of  religion  in 
schools.  Napoleon  the  First  and  Napoleon  the  Third 
had  entrusted  a  great  many  State-supported  schools 
to  the  Christian  Brothers  and  to  various  orders  of 
women.  These  schools  were  not  uniformly  effective; 
as  a  rule,  the  Christian  Brothers  were  excellent  teachers, 
the  nuns  less  so.  Yet  the  improvement  among  them 
was  constant,  and  when  a  law  was  passed  making  the 
usual  degree  as  imperative  for  them  as  for  the  other 
teachers,  there  was  no  reason  why  they  should  be 
inferior  to  anybody  else.  But  the  objection  against 
them  was  not  based  on  lack  of  professional  efficiency 
but  on  the  spirit  which  their  costume  seemed  to  repre- 
sent. A  bill  was  passed  in  1880  secularizing,  as  it  was 
called,  all  the  Government  schools,  and  determining 
what  the  teaching  of  religion  in  them  ought  to  be. 
Ferry,  the  principal  initiator  of  this  measure,  was  not  an 
atheist;  in  fact  his  religious  views  did  not  differ  very 
much  from  those  of  Jules  Simon,  and  the  other  disciples 
of  Cousin.  The  mention  of  God,  the  soul,  and  morals 
was  not  forbidden  in  the  schools,  the  children  were  to  be 
taught  their  ethical  duties,  but  all  this  was  carefully 
regulated.  The  teaching  of  the  master,  though  in 
ninety-nine  cases  in  a  hundred  destined  exclusively  for 
Catholic  children,  must  exclude  all  that  could  give 
offence  to  other  denominations,  or  even  to  mere  Theists 
opposed  to  any  revealed  creed.  This  was  called  the 
Neutrality  of  the  school. 


94  The  Deterioration  of  France 

It  was  evident  that  in  a  country  overwhelmingly 
Catholic  in  numbers  this  legislation  would  inevitably 
bear  the  appearance  of  what  it  was  indeed  secretly 
meant  to  be,  and  that  it  would  promptly  become  in  its 
spirit  a  legal  warfare  against  Catholic  beliefs.  Every- 
thing depended  upon  the  school  teacher,  and  it  promptly 
turned  out  that  the  school  teacher  who  kept  furthest 
away  from  the  interpretation  of  the  Church  in  his 
presentment  of  Theism  was  regarded  by  his  supe- 
riors as  nearest  the  ideal  of  neutrality,  and  rewarded 
accordingly. 

But  the  passage  of  Catholicism  to  Theism  in  French- 
men not  exceptionally  well  educated,  and  in  the  years 
immediately  following  the  success  of  Taine  as  a  de- 
molisher  of  Cousin  and  of  the  very  Theism  recom- 
mended by  Ferry,  could  not  result  very  frequently  in 
the  creation  of  a  state  of  mind  similar  to  Rousseau's  or 
of  a  sincere — if  extremely  sober — Swiss  piety.  Such  an 
attitude  is  almost  impossible  in  Latin  countries  in  which 
rationalistic  belief  only  exists  as  the  refinement  of  a 
highly  educated  elite,  nor  would  it  have  been  greatly 
favoured  by  the  enemies  of  the  Grand  Architect;  so 
in  many  places,  mere  Theism  soon  became  the  religion 
of  Science,  with  the  identification  of  God  with  the 
category  of  Ideal,  Progress,  and  Evolution,  and  above 
all,  the  most  perfimctory  manner  of  teaching  the  official 
chapter  dedicated  to  Spiritualism.  A  few  facts  have 
shown  how  Ferry's  Theism  was  understood  both  by  the 
teaching  body  and  by  politicians.  The  time-honoured 
example  in  Lhomond's  Latin  Grammar,  Deus  est  Sanc- 
tuSy  was  dismissed  from  improved  editions  as  dangerous 
for  neutrality.  One  school  edition  of  La  Fontaine  re- 
placed "Petit  poisson  deviendra  grand  si  Dieu  lui  prete 
vie"  by  ''Si  Ton  lui  pr6te  vie."    M.  Fouillee,  the  well- 


Anti-Clericalism  the  Only  Policy        95 

known  philosopher,  had  the  very  unphilosophic  weak- 
ness to  alter  a  passage  in  his  wife's  popular  Tour  de 
France  par  Deux  Enfants,  so  as  to  leave  out  a  visit 
of  the  two  young  travellers  to  Notre  Dame  de  Paris. 
Finally  M.  Combes,  at  the  time  of  his  greatest  popu- 
larity as  an  anti-Catholic  Premier,  was  hooted  down 
by  his  majority  for  saying  that  he  was  a  SpirituaHst, 
and  had  to  come  a  few  days  later  and  make  amends 
for  his  imprudence  by  explaining  his  statement  in  a 
manner  which  explained  it  away. 

This  historical  scene  belongs,  it  is  true,  to  the  Drey- 
fusist  period  of  the  Third  Republic,  to  which  I  shall 
only  advert  by  and  by,  but  it  throws  its  light  on  the 
preceding  years,  and  leaves  no  doubt  that  when  the 
Republican  majority  passed  the  Ferry  Bill  in  1880,  it 
regarded  it  only  as  a  first  step  towards  more  radical 
suppressions. 

The  campaign  against  religious  teaching  is  only  one 
phase  of  the  endless  war  waged  against  the  Church  by 
the  Third  Republic;  and  if  I  wished  to  give  even  in 
outline  a  more  complete  sketch  of  its  history,  I  should 
have  to  review  the  Parliamentary  history  of  France 
almost  month  by  month — any  random  reference  to  the 
Journal  Officiel  will  prove  this — but  the  effort  of  the 
Republicans  in  the  first  bloom  of  their  success  to  de- 
christianize  France  through  the  schools  shows  not  only 
the  spirit  of  their  leaders,  but  also  their  policy.  This 
has  consisted,  and  still  consists  at  the  present  day,  in 
proposing  the  philosophical  campaign  against  religion 
in  all  its  forms — even  the  vaguest — as  a  continuation 
of  the  great  contest  of  the  years  1871-1878  against  the 
Monarchist  clergy. 

Such  a  policy  has  had  a  double  advantage.  It  has 
often   blinded   uncritical   people   to   the   really   anti- 


96  The  Deterioration  of  France 

Christian  character  of  measures  presented  as  the  legiti- 
mate resistance  of  the  lay  against  the  religious  society 
— the  measures  against  the  religious  orders  have  had 
universally  this  character — and  when,  at  various  epochs, 
the  Republican  unity  has  seemed  to  be  threatened, 
it  has  helped  to  bring  together  the  disjoined  parts  of 
the  majority.  The  "black  spectre"  pointed  out  now  by 
Combes,  now  by  Bourgeois,  had  often  frightened 
deputies  or  electors  into  their  duty,  which  is  to  support 
the  Government.  This  attitude  is  sometimes  sincere — 
and  then  it  is  rather  stupid — sometimes  put  on,  and 
then  it  borders  on  hypocrisy,  but  even  in  the  most 
resolutely  Protestant  countries  the  terror  of  Rome 
could  not  be  more  powerful  in  its  immediate  effects. 
The  confusion  of  anti-clericalism  with  anti-Catholicism 
or  anti-Christianity  has  been  so  easy  to  produce,  and  is 
so  ineradicable,  that  even  now,  after  forty-four  years, 
after  the  effort  made  by  Leo  XIII  to  win  the  Catholics 
to  Republican  loyalty,  after  the  success  of  such  a  truly 
Republican  movement  as  the  SilloUj  the  word  Repub- 
lican in  the  mouths  of  Radicals  means  nothing  else 
than  a  man  more  or  less  opposed  to  the  Church.  *'The 
whole  religious  question  lies  between  us  as  a  gulf, "  said 
a  Prime  Minister  to  M.  Cochin.  Who  was  this  Prime 
Minister?  M.  Poincare  himself,  moderate  though  he  be. 
And  when  did  he  say  this?  In  19 12,  seven  years  after 
the  fall  of  Combes  and  the  apparent  cessation  of  the 
most  abject  compression  of  religious  liberty.  There 
are  reasons  to  suspect  that  this  statement  was  only  a 
political  stratagem,  but  it  does  not  make  it  less  amazing 
that  tlie  stratagem  should  have  any  effect. 

The  chief  work  of  the  Third  Republic  therefore  has 
been  the  destruction  of  the  influence  of  the  Church  in 
France,  not  only  as  a  society  but  as  the  vehicle  of  an 


The  Public  Spirit  97 

ethical  doctrine,  and  the  corresponding  establishment 
— by  poHticians  construing  Renan  like  village  school- 
masters— of  a  secular  society  based  on  unbelief.  This, 
of  course,  was  dangerous,  because  the  effects  of  unbelief 
on  societies  have  never  been  known  to  be  less  pernicious 
than  those  of  fanaticism;  but  it  was  dangerous  from 
another  point  of  view.  It  created  in  a  country  which 
had  the  incredible  luck  not  to  be  divided  by  various 
religious  creeds  a  state  of  division  as  bitter  as  may  have 
existed  in  Germany  or  England  in  the  worst  post- 
reformation  times.  As  usual  this  fever  of  controversy 
and  persecution  had  for  its  immediate  consequence 
the  blinding  of  those  whom  it  possessed  to  any  other 
object.  For  the  questions:  What  are  the  Germans 
doing  in  Asia?  What  are  the  Italians  planning  in  the 
Holy  Land.f^  was  substituted  the  haunting  problem: 
How  can  the  Republic  get  rid  of  the  Chufch,  of  her 
creed,  and  of  her  influence? 

Needless  to  say  how  this  one-sided  attention  helped 
the  deterioration  of  the  country.  Anti- Christianity, 
limited  as  it  was  under  the  Empire  to  a  few  Parisian 
circles,  would  only  have  lasted  as  long  as  the  belief 
in  Science ;  poured  into  broad  popular  currents,  it  poi- 
soned the  reserves  of  national  life.  No  greater  folly 
could  well  be  conceived  than  that  of  a  Government 
not  only  witnessing  but  proctuing  this  state  of  dis- 
sociation, and  proclaiming  itself  highly  patriotic  at  the 
same  time. 

9.     The  Public  Spirit,    Illusions  and  Vulgarity 

If  religion  were  still  a  great  factor  in  the  life  of 
France,  or  if  it  were  practised  by  the  majority  instead 
of  by  a  decidedly  small  minority,  the  unification  of  the 


98  The  Deterioration  of  France 

Republicans  through  an  anti-religious  policy  would  have 
been  impossible.  As  it  was,  the  French  Catholics,  too 
few  or  too  weak,  and  hampered  besides  by  the  Con- 
cordat, which  gradually  became  an  unbreakable  bond, 
did  not  show  fight,  and,  instead  of  a  religious  war, 
France  only  saw  a  religious  persecution.  This  persecu- 
tion might  have  been  violent.  It  hardly  ever  was. 
Those  who  carried  it  on  realized  that  when  the  clergy 
had  been  so  harassed  that  nobody  could  believe  in  its 
occult  power,  its  chief  raison  d'etre  would  be  at  an  end, 
and  they  proceeded  cautiously  and  methodically.  In 
this  way  nobody  ever  complained  very  loudly;  it  was 
only  during  the  Combes  Government  that  Europe  be- 
came aware  of  a  dangerous  example  of  legal  robbery, 
so  that  which  might  have  been  a  source  of  indignation, 
and  consequently  of  energy,  was  only  the  slow  weaken- 
ing of  a  great  moral  influence. 

On  the  whole,  while  an  anarchical  form  of  De- 
mocracy was  diminishing  the  chances  of  France  on 
all  sides,  the  public  spirit  was  optimistic,  or  at  any 
rate  apathetic,  and  people  lived  on  illusions  and 
short-sighted  selfishness. 

The  politicians  set  the  example  of  perfect  satisfaction. 
They  pretended  every  now  and  then  to  have  great 
fears  of  a  reaction  which  would  bring  back  a  Monarchy 
or  a  Dictatorship  with  all  their  abuses  and  the  tyranny 
of  the  Church  to  boot,  but  only  once — during  the  few 
months  in  which  the  Boulangist  agitation  was  at  its 
height — ^were  they  really  sincere.  They  lived  in  the 
vain  amusements  of  their  party  politics,  and  in  the 
enjoyment  of  unhoped-for  power;  remote  as  they  were 
from  any  ambition  to  influence  European  politics,  they 
cherished  the  comforting  illusion  that  peace  never 
brings  on  war,  and  that  France  might  dwindle  while 


The  Public  Spirit  99 

others  grew,  but  they  at  all  events  would  not  be 
affected  by  the  diminution. 

Their  electors  were  as  blind.  Everybody  who  is 
attentive  to  the  variations  of  public  opinion  must 
know  how  difficult  it  is  to  resist  them,  how  unavailing 
mere  logic  is  when  it  has  to  withstand  the  quiet  cer- 
tainties of  the  millions,  and  how  inclined  the  philosopher 
himself  is  to  doubt  his  own  conclusions  in  the  presence 
of  a  sceptical  public  spirit.  Now,  logic  and  even  mere 
investigation  were  seldom  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
anomalous  situation  which  the  preponderance  of  pro- 
fessional politicians  had  created  and  kept  up  in  France. 
The  Constitution  was  known  to  be  a  paradox,  but  it 
might  be  amended.  Something  was  sure  to  happen;  a 
man  could  not  but  arise ;  the  Republic  was  so  young,  it 
would  be  absurd  to  despond  over  it  before  giving  it  a 
fair  trial.  Besides  it  was  evidently  useless  to  struggle 
against  it.  The  Revolution  was  one  great  fact  which 
outweighed  many  logical  principles;  it  was  also  a  fact 
that  its  main  notions  were  in  the  air  everywhere,  and 
that  no  human  power  could  resist  them.  There  were 
signs  of  an  imminent  change  even  in  Turkey,  and  in 
Russia.  Republics  were  bound  to  succeed  Monarchies 
in  Europe  as  in  America,  and  was  it  not  better  for  a 
country  to  have  forestalled  the  inevitable  transforma- 
tions? The  French  Republic  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Freemasons,  no  doubt,  and  this  was  productive  of 
woes,  but  the  Freemasons  could  not  go  on  for  ever,  and 
was  it  not  remarkable  that  their  everlastingly-repeated 
motto.  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,  was  after  all  an 
epitome  of  the  gospel?  Some  day,  surely,  these  words 
would  be  something  better  than  empty  sounds,  and 
an  era  of  idealism  and  prosperity  should  begin. 

It  is  so  true  that  this  confidence  in  an  unforeseen 


loo         The  Deterioration  of  France 

development  was  universal  that  in  1890,  twelve  years 
after  the  first  indications  of  the  Republican  ill-will 
against  Catholicism — when  Leo  XIII  advised  the 
French  clergy  to  adhere  unreservedly  to  the  Republic 
and  to  preach  loyalty  to  their  flocks — the  enthusiasm 
was  almost  universal;  all  the  younger  men  had  long 
anticipated  the  Pope's  advice  and  welcomed  it  as  a 
liberation  from  trammels. 

This  generous  hope  in  the  future  was  not  founded 
exclusively  on  dreams  and  clouds.  Facts  would  fre- 
quently give  croakers  the  lie.  The  colonial  policy  was 
more  a  success  than  a  failure;  Ferry  and  his  disciples 
were  succeeded  by  Meline — a  converted  Communist — 
and  by  Hanotaux;  the  Russian  alliance  was  an  event 
which  could  not  be  exaggerated;  trade  was  said  to  be 
flat,  but  statistics  proved  that  it  was  not  so ;  as  to  fears 
of  war,  for  ever  circulated,  for  ever  belied  by  events, 
they  were  bugbears  which  grew  to  be  the  more  dis- 
believed as  they  were  more  talked  about. 

On  the  whole,  there  ran  deep  in  France  an  under- 
current of  the  enthusiasm  which  had  fancied  the  Re- 
public so  fair  while  the  Empire  was  old  and  tottering, 
and,  this  enthusiasm  preventing  any  attempt  at  a 
reasoned  criticism  of  the  Constitution  and  anticipation 
of  its  inevitable  shortcomings,  delusions  and  optimism 
prevailed.  Such  a  state  of  public  opinion  is  apt  to  be 
translated  into  florid  political  speeches  or  into  occa- 
sional popular  demonstrations,  and  of  these  there  was 
great  plenty.  But  speeches  and  demonstrations  corre- 
spond only  to  paroxysms,  and  between  such  outbursts 
the  philosophy  of  the  man  in  the  street  is  dominant. 
But  that  of  the  newspaper-reader,  with  enough  leisure 
to  know  what  he  thinks  and  enough  of  the  hereditary 
French  outspokenness  not  to  be  afraid  of  the  expression 


The  Public  Spirit  loi 

of  his  thoughts,  is  active.  This  latent  philosophy  of  the 
Third  Republic  was  by  no  means  of  the  high  or  noble 
order. 

Lurking  more  or  less  deeply  under  the  surface  is 
the  belief  of  great  and  small  in  Progress;  the  certainty 
that  Science,  that  is  to  say  Light,  must  produce  civiliza- 
tion and  prosperity;  this  is  the  basis  of  the  universal 
optimism.  But  beside  this,  there  is  the  moral  pessimism 
distinguishable  in  all  the  literary  forms  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  above  all  in  the  Naturalism  which 
is  characteristically  the  literature  of  this  age.  Ideas  are 
great  and  noble,  but  men  are  low,  selfish,  and  fre- 
quently hypocritical.  Politicians  above  all  are  coarse 
charlatans,  and  it  takes  the  stupidity  of  the  mob  to  be 
taken  in  by  their  claptrap.  Rich  people  are  selfish,  and 
tyrannical  to  cruelty;  but  the  poor  would  be  as  bad 
if  they  were  rich.  Everybody  is  selfish.  The  only 
philosophical  statement  that  is  never  challenged  is  the 
utiHtarian  postulate:  Whatever  we  do  is  done  out  of 
self-interest,  and  virtue  properly  analysed  is  the  most 
refined  form  of  selfishness.  This,  added  to  the  current 
notions  about  the  non-existence  of  free-will,  leaves 
everybody  satisfied  with  his  own  mediocrity  and 
secretly  elated  at  discovering  in  himself  the  vague 
generosity  bound  with  the  formulas  bequeathed  by  the 
Revolution.  "We  are  pretty  low,  but  we  might  be 
much  worse,"  probably  would  express  the  universal 
feeling.  In  this  way  pessimism  is  once  more  corrected 
into  a  sort  of  optimism. 

Political  scepticism  is  as  widely  spread  as  its  philo- 
sophical counterpart.  Even  literary  people  are  ex- 
tremely ignorant  of  history,  and  build  their  judgments 
upon  psychological  analyses  which  they  generalize 
freely.     The  idea  is  that  abuses  have  always  existed, 


102         The  Deterioration  of  France 

and  exist  or  will  soon  exist  everywhere.  The  true 
philosophy  is  to  make  up  one's  mind  that  things  will 
not  mend  in  our  lifetime,  and  that  the  inevitable  im- 
provement which  the  Deus  ex  machinay  Progress,  will 
some  day  bring  about  will  be  so  slow  that  its  witnesses 
can  hardly  perceive  it,  and  consequently  they  will  not 
be  better  off  than  we  are.  When  comparisons  between 
neighbouring  countries  and  France  are  suggested,  a 
doubtful  shrug  is  all  that  is  vouchsafed  in  answer;  who 
can  verify  those  statements?  besides,  what  does  it 
matter?  all  civilized  countries  are  in  the  same  boat;  if 
some  are  in  a  clearer  or  happier  condition  than  the 
others,  they  will  either  be  soon  corrupted  down  to  the 
common  level  or,  on  the  contrary,  their  superiority  must 
in  time  act  as  a  ferment  to  the  benefit  of  the  others. 

The  only  possibility  that  is  really  dreaded  is  a  war, 
but  that  possibility  luckily  is  but  a  product  of  ancestral 
imaginations;  in  fact  war  is  an  impossibility.  Govern- 
ments realize  that  conditions  are  changed,  that  what 
used  to  be  gained  in  past  times  by  territorial  expansion 
is  now  gained  by  greater  facilities  for  commerce;  it  is 
proved  scientifically  that  a  successful  war  is  as  dis- 
astrous as  a  defeat ;  besides,  governments  are  not  alone 
the  arbitrators  of  peace  nowadays;  even  the  humblest 
peasant  has  his  say,  and  the  international  press — in 
close  connexion  with  the  international  finance — ^is  his 
organ  as  well  as  his  defender.  No,  wars  are  impossibili- 
ties; alliances  are  lightning  conductors  conceived  in  a 
manner  entirely  new  and  civilized;  the  only  thing  is  to 
live  and  let  live,  and  not  be  disturbed  by  bugbears. 

This  last  formula  leads  directly  to  the  peaceful  and 
often  smiling,  but  at  core  cowardly  indulgence  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  Third  Republic.  There  being  no 
obvious  patriotic  ideal,  and  the  government  impressing 


The  Public  Spirit  103 

individuals  with  a  marked  idea  that  legislation  is  made 
for  them  and  not  for  society,  there  cannot  be  any  such 
patriotism  as  is  to  be  seen  in  Germany,  Italy,  the 
United  States,  and  especially  Japan.  Each  one  thinks 
of  himself  and  says  it  with  perfect  frankness.  Money 
is  despised  instead  of  being  cherished,  as  it  was  in  past 
ages,  for  purposes  worth  the  while,  but  it  is  imiversally 
sought  as  the  only  means  of  making  life  enjoyable. 
For  the  same  reason  the  ancient  views  concerning  the 
family  are  not  only  discarded  but  ridiculed,  and 
Malthusianism  is  preached  unblushingly  with  the  con- 
stant connivance  of  the  Government. 

Selfishness  is  never  cheerful,  and  this  period  is  no 
exception;  there  is  a  sort  of  dreary  gaiety  in  life  and 
literature  and  on  the  stage — the  admixture  of  pessim- 
ism, of  excitement  often  artificially  created,  of  frankness 
constantly  exaggerated  to  cynicism,  and  of  unman- 
liness  complacently  displayed  which  modem  slang  calls 
veulerie.  Read  the  works  of  Gyp,  of  Lavedan,  of  Don- 
nay,  and  of  their  numberless  imitators;  you  will  see 
the  same  enervation  made  pitiful  by  its  very  conscious- 
ness ;  all  these  people  have  not  much  brains,  apparently 
little  heart,  often  the  coarse  manners  which  Jewish 
materialism  diffuses  with  money,  but  they  know  their 
degradation,  they  analyse  it,  and  they  would  suffer 
from  it  if  their  emotions  were  not  so  completely  blunted. 

All  the  vices  which  people  had  without  quite  realiz- 
ing them  under  the  Empire  these  degenerates  have  with 
full  consciousness.  There  is  an  abyss  between  them 
and  the  characters  of  Augier,  for  instance,  who  only 
seem  as  if  they  were  trying  to  be  roues. 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  say  that  all  these  dreamers, 
money-makers,  or  pleasure-seekers  are  incapable  of  the 
intellectual  attitude  which,  from  the  patriotic  stand- 


104         The  Deterioration  of  France 

point,  alone  matters;  they  never  look  beyond  their 
immediate  circle  of  needs  or  passions,  and  the  relation 
of  France  to  the  rest  of  Europe  is  as  indifferent  to  them 
as  if  their  home  were  really  Sirius. 

To  conclude:  in  1898,  almost  thirty  years  after  the 
war,  France  appears  much  more  remote  from  the 
possibility  of  La  Revanche  than  in  1875.  Her  rivals, 
especially  Germany  and  Italy,  have  progressed  while 
she  remained  stationary  at  home,  and  only  expanded 
overseas  where — owing  to  the  lack  of  a  navy — her 
power  is  almost  nominal.  Her  real  masters  are  irre- 
sponsible assemblies  chosen  without  any  respect  to  her 
vital  interests  as  a  nation,  and  the  divisions  and 
contradictions  of  these  assemblies  are  glaringly  visible. 
She  has  no  settled  policy  in  Europe,  and  her  alliance 
with  Russia  bears  in  consequence  the  appearance  more 
of  a  protection  than  of  an  alliance  for  definite  purposes. 
Of  the  lack  of  a  responsible  authority,  and  of  the  gradual 
settling  of  the  country  into  the  position  of  a  nation  of 
second  order,  or  what  one  begins  to  call  a  puissance 
d'appui,  the  public  is  only  vaguely  aware  and  cares 
little.  They  console  themselves  with  a  philosophy 
based  on  the  inevitableness  of  universal  decline,  and 
above  all  with  the  new  facilities  for  making  money ;  the 
feeling  which  the  foreigner  who  observed  France  the 
most  carefully  during  that  period  ^  met  with  everywhere 
is  expressed  in  the  stereotyped  phrase:  I  take  no  in- 
terest in  politics.  In  fact,  politics  seem  to  be  left 
entirely  to  themselves ;  that  is  to  say,  a  certain  number 
of  ideas  called  Republican  are  exploited  by  a  few 
hundred  professionals  who,  unable  to  criticize  them, 
but  finding  it  easy  to  handle  them  against  less  un- 
scrupulous rivals,  lose  their  heads  over  them,  as  specu- 

» Mr.  Bodley  in  his  admirable  work,  France. 


Dreyfusism  105 

lators  do  in  a  boom.  It  is  to  this  kind  of  intoxication 
that  the  period  ending  in  1898  leads  us,  and  during  the 
following  seven  years,  which  we  shall  presently  review,  a 
sort  of  destructive  folly  possesses  politicians ;  they  wildly 
go  to  work,  and  what  they  do  is  nothing  short  of  a  sack- 
age  of  France  in  the  name  of  reason  and  justice. 

1898-1905 

10.    Deterioration  of  France  by  International  Socialism 

It  is  remarkable  that  this  period  does  not  coincide 
entirely  with  what  it  is  agreed  to  call  "bad  govern- 
ments." In  1898,  the  Fashoda  incident  and  the  return 
of  a  new  Chamber  compelled  M.  Meline  to  give  up 
office,  but  M.  Dupuy,  who  succeeded  him,  with  M.  de 
Freycinet  as  Foreign  Minister,  held  the  same  principles. 
Moreover,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  the  same  spirit 
of  moderation  which  M.  SpuUer  had  termed  V  esprit 
nouveau  prevailed  in  the  Cabinet.  Yet  it  is  impossible 
not  to  date  the  great  disorganization  of  France  from 
1898,  and  this  shows  how  inefficient  even  good  men  can 
be  under  a  Constitution  like  that  of  1875.  A  spirit 
spread  over  France  which  first  of  all  nullified  the  good 
intentions  of  M.  Dupuy  and  later  of  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau,  and  in  four  years'  time  this  destructive  spirit 
produced  M.  Combes.  It  is  needless  to  remind  the 
reader  that  the  period  of  violence  which  will  be  known 
in  history  as  Combism  was  prepared  by  the  apparent 
idealism  of  the  Dreyfusist  agitation. 

II.    Dreyfusism 

For  many  years  it  was  impossible  to  speak  of  the 
Dreyfus  affair,  no  matter  how  historically,  without  giv- 


io6         The  Deterioration  of  France 

ing  offence;  one  had  to  be  warmly  favourable  to  Drey- 
fus or  run  the  risk  of  being  regarded  as  meanly  opposed 
to  him,  and  under  such  circumstances  any  attempt  at 
a  matter-of-fact  presentment  of  the  events  and  their 
concatenation  was  out  of  the  question.  To-day,  the 
lesson  of  history  has  gradually  become  known,  even  to 
people  living  out  of  France,  and  one  may  safely  say, 
what  I  just  hinted  at,  and  what  is  as  clear  as  daylight, 
;^Viz.,  that  Combism  came  out  of  Dreyfusism  as  the 
steam  out  of  heat. 

The  chief  facts  of  the  case  are  in  every  memory. 
In  1895,  Captain  Dreyfus  was  condemned  to  perpetual 
imprisonment  on  the  charge  of  delivering  important 
military  documents  to  a  foreign  power,  and  there  were 
no  protests  against  the  verdict;  a  number  of  French 
officers  about  whose  honour  there  could  be  no  doubt 
had  expressed  their  conviction  that  Dreyfus  was  guilty, 
and  few  voices  were  heard  in  his  defence.  The  con- 
demnation was  welcomed  with  loud  applause  by  the 
many  Frenchmen  who  had  sided  with  the  famous 
journalist,  Edouard  Drumont,  in  his  long  campaign 
against  the  Jews.  To  Drumont  the  Jew  was  ob- 
jectionable, not  because  of  his  religion,  but  on  account 
of  his  race  and  of  the  characteristics  which  belong  to  it. 
The  Jews  were  not  French,  and  never  could  be  French. 
They  lived  in  France,  as  everywhere  else,  as  if  they 
were  encamped,  getting  as  much  as  they  could  out  of  the 
country  but  always  ready  to  emigrate  to  another  if  they 
thought  it  advantageous.  So  it  was  absurd  to  speak 
without  noticing  the  impropriety  of  "Jewish  officers  in 
the  French  army";  one  might  as  well  have  spoken  of 
"German  officers  in  the  French  army."  All  the  mis- 
take came  from  regarding  the  Jew  as  merely  a  person 
of  another  religion.     It  was  clear  that  the  treason  of 


Dreyfusism  107 

Dreyfus — demonstrated  as  it  seemed  to  be  in  1895 — 
was  an  irrefutable  proof  of  the  soundness  of  Drumont*s 
theory,  and  the  satisfaction  of  his  supporters  or  admirers 
was  perfect  jubilation. 

The  irritation  of  other  people  was  no  less.  The 
Jjews  naturally  felt  the  weight  of  a  sentence  which 
seemed  to  fall  heavily  upon  them,  but  for  other  reasons 
many  Frenchmen  disliked  it  as  much  as  they  did. 
The  army  in  1895  was  as  popular  as  ever  it  had  been 
since  the  days  of  Napoleon  the  First,  and  the  debates 
of  the  Coiu't-Martial,  with  a  revelation  of  the  danger  to 
which  the  military  preparation  of  France  had  been 
exposed,  had  only  made  it  the  more  popular.  Yet, 
as  I  said,  there  were  dissenters.  The  jealousy  which  the 
politicians  of  the  Third  Republic  felt  from  the  first 
against  the  army,  its  dashing  brilliance,  its  order,  its 
disciplined  intelligence,  and  above  all  the  everlasting 
possibility  of  some  exceptionally  popular  officer  throw- 
ing civilian  rivals  into  the  shade,  existed  also  to  some 
extent  among  the  bourgeoisie.  Young  men  belonging 
to  those  classes,  and  compelled  to  serve  like  everybody 
else,  resented  having  to  obey  .peasant  petty  officers. 
Many  whom  the  dry  intellectual  spirit  of  the  times  had 
impregnated  from  their  infancy,  and  who  affected  to 
admit  no  superiority  except  that  of  the  brain,  spoke 
of  their  military  service  as  a  sort  of  martyrdom  during 
which  culture  had  to  submit  to  brute  force,  and  intelli- 
gence was  degraded  to  mean  employments.  These 
people  had  seen  with  displeasure  popular  favour  greet 
the  General  Staff  on  many  occasions  dtuing  the  first 
proceedings  of  the  Affair.  When,  in  1897,  rumours 
began  to  be  circulated  that  everything  had  not  been 
perfectly  regular  in  the  judgment  of  1895,  it  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at  if  these  rumours  were  welcomed  with 


io8  The  Deterioration  of  France 

intense  interest.  And  when,  in  August,  1898,  an  officer, 
who  was  an  anti-Semite  too,  revealed  that  one  of  the 
chief  documents  which  had  helped  in  inclining  the 
opinion  of  the  Court-Martial  against  Dreyfus  had  been 
forged  by  Lieutenant-Colonel  Henry,  there  r/as  such  an 
outburst  as  those  who  witnessed  it  can  never  forget. 
In  a  moment  the  whole  outlook  changed;  Dreyfus 
appeared  as  a  martyr,  and  the  General  Staff,  including 
three  Ministers  of  War  who  had  been  unanimous  in 
their  conviction  that  the  officer  was  guilty,  seemed  to  be 
nothing  else  than  the  accomplices  of  a  forger.  In  a 
few  weeks  the  case  ceased  to  be  a  local  affair  to  become 
the  most  exciting  judiciary  drama  of  modern  times. 
In  every  part  of  Europe,  Dreyfus  found  friends  not 
only  among  his  co-religionists  who,  even  in  poor 
Russian  villages,  subscribed  towards  his  justification, 
but  among  all  those  who  imagined  with  increasing  in- 
dignation that  justice  had  been  denied  an  innocent  man. 
Few  were  the  men  famous  in  literature  or  science  who 
did  not  express  their  feelings  in  public  utterances. 

Often  one  could  detect  in  these  declarations  the 
lurking  suspicion  that  Dreyfus  had  been  condemned  in 
a  Catholic  country  because  he  was  not  a  Catholic,  and 
so  the  ill-treated  officer  became  doubly  a  martyr. 
Often  also  it  was  evident  that  people  who  from  some 
racial  antagonism  hated  France  were  glad  of  this 
chance  to  vent  their  ill-will.  At  any  rate  the  state 
of  opinion  was  such  that  the  campaign  in  favour  of 
Dreyfus  seemed  more  like  a  crusade,  but  a  crusade  of 
which  indignation  and  hatred  more  than  love  and 
reverence  were  the  chief  elements. 

The  last  months  of  1898  and  most  of  1899  were  filled 
by  this  overwhelming  agitation,  and  it  mattered  little 
that  M.  Dupuy  or  anybody  else  was  at  the  head  of 


Dreyfusism  109 

affairs.  Common  parlance  alludes  to  the  previous  years 
as  the  Meline  Government,  but  the  twelvemonth  preced- 
ing July,  1899,  is  never  spoken  of  as  the  Dupuy  Govern- 
ment; it  is  simply  called  "the  time  of  the  Affair." 

In  July,  1899,  M.  Dupuy  fell,  and  it  became  evident 
that  the  Cabinet  which  succeeded  his  would  be  chosen 
exclusively  to  supervise  the  revision  of  Dreyfus's  case. 
M.  Poincar6,  the  future  President  of  the  Republic, 
failed  in  forming  a  Cabinet,  owing  to  M.  Leon  Bour- 
geois's aversion  to  responsibilities,  and  the  mission 
was  finally  entrusted  to  M.  Waldeck- Rousseau.  This 
gentleman  was  a  barrister  of  high  fame  and  standing, 
with  an  eminently  judicial  head,  and  a  self-control 
which  in  the  Chamber  as  well  as  at  the  Law  Courts 
secured  him  respect  and  influence.  Politically,  he  had 
always  been  considered  a  Moderate,  and  even  a  touch 
of  anti-clericalism  did  not  make  him  lose  this  label. 
It  appeared  probable  from  the  moment  his  name  was 
mentioned  that  he  would  devote  his  cool  energies  and 
his  professional  capacities  to  an  entirely  judicial  ter- 
mination of  the  case  over  which  the  whole  world  hung 
breathless. 

However,  it  is  not  easy  to  be  a  politician  and  to  be 
purely  judicial,  even  if  one  seems  predestined  for  the 
task.  There  was  universal  surprise  when  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  took  into  the  Cabinet  M.  Millerand,  who  at 
the  time  was  a  very  .different  man  from  what  he  is 
to-day,  and  embodied,  even  more  than  M.  Jaur^s,  the 
most  uncompromising  Socialism.  But  M.  Millerand 
was  very  like  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  in  many  ways, 
clear-headed,  business-like,  persevering,  and  above  the 
suspicion  of  dishonesty.  Probably  the  new  Prime 
Minister  thought  rather  of  his  collaborator's  abilities 
than  of  the  political  tendency  he  represented,  and  did 


no         The  Deterioration  of  France 

not  suspect  that  the  Socialists  would  be  raised  by  the 
elevation  of  their  leader  to  a  position  they  had  never 
occupied  before.  He  was  right  about  M.  Millerand, 
whose  tenure  of  office  made  him  grow  to  be  the  unique 
statesman  we  have  known  him  since,  but,  as  I  shall 
presently  show,  he  made  a  mistake  about  the  conse- 
quences of  choosing  a  Minister  from  among  a  group 
which,  until  then,  had  been  regarded  as  gratuitously 
violent  and  possessed  of  no  positive  influence. 

In  September,  1899,  Dreyfus  was  tried  again  by  a 
Court-Martial  at  Rennes,  once  more  declared  guilty 
of  treason  by  five  votes  against  two,  but  this  time  it 
was  with  extenuating  circumstances,  and  almost  im- 
mediately M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  issued  a  decree  par- 
doning him.  Dreyfus  accepted  his  pardon  and  the 
Affair  seemed  practically  closed,  but  Dreyfusism  did  not 
disappear  with  the  pretext  which  had  given  rise  to  it. 
There  remained  a  group  of  personal  friends  of  Dreyfus 
who  went  on  with  the  legal  agitation  until  they  had 
him  rehabilitated,  not  by  a  Court-Martial  but  by  the 
Court  of  Cassation,  and  somewhat  irregularly.  Above 
all,  the  many  people  who  had  seen  in  the  Affair  a  peg 
on  which  to  hang  their  own  animosities  were  more 
flushed  than  sobered  by  the  step  taken  by  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau,  and  after  the  fight  they  insisted  on  revenge. 
The  chief  enemy  had  been  the  General  Staff,  and,  in 
fact,  the  army  with  all  the  manifestations  of  the  military 
spirit.  But  many  of  the  Staff  officers  were  supposed  to 
be  practising  Catholics  and  likely  to  be  influenced  by 
the  Jesuits ;  the  hypocrisy  or  prejudices  of  some  French- 
men, helped  by  the  ignorance  of  millions  of  foreigners 
of  the  real  state  of  France,  had  presented  the  Dreyfus 
Affair  as  a  case  of  religious  persecution,  and  the  Church 
was  denounced  as  bitterly  as  the  army. 


Dreyfusism  iii 

While  the  trial  at  Rennes  was  going  on,  there  was  a 
riot  in  Paris — the  first  that  had  been  seen  since  the 
Commune — and  the  leaders  had  as  their  chief  object 
the  destruction  of  a  church,  which,  in  fact,  was  pillaged. 
Besides,  it  has  been  a  constant  tradition  with  the  Third 
Republic  to  create  unanimity  against  the  Church  among 
politicians  whenever  divisions  on  other  subjects  became 
alarming,  and  this  was  a  rare  occasion  for  reconciling 
the  Radicals  with  the  rising  Socialist  party.  M.  Wal- 
deck-Rousseau  soon  announced  his  intention  to  take 
measures  against  the  moines  ligueurs  et  marchands, 
meaning  the  Jesuits  and  the  Assumptionists  who  at  the 
time  edited  the  Croix  newspaper  and  had  been  resolute 
anti-Dreyfusists. 

M.  Waldeck-Rousseau,  in  an  address  which  he  de- 
livered later  on  at  Toulouse,  spoke  his  mind  openly 
on  the  subject  of  the  religious  orders.  Evidently  his 
own  opinion  was  not  only  that  some  religious  orders  ^ 
were  unduly  mixed  up  in  politics,  and  that  the  education  ' 
given  in  the  Jesuits'  schools  divided  the  French  youth 
into  two  antagonistic  portions,  but  also  that  religious 
vows  in  themselves  were  unnatural  and  in  contradiction 
with  the  modem  notion  of  human  liberty.  But  he  was 
too  much  of  a  legalist  to  make  such  a  doctrine  the  basis 
of  a  new  legislation,  and  whatever  may  have  been  the 
influence  upon  him  of  the  anti-religious  atmosphere  or  of 
his  own  well-known  wrongs,  the  law  with  which  he 
wanted  to  hit  at  the  influence  of  the  Jesuits  and  the 
Assumptionists  did  not  wear  the  appearance  of  an 
exception.  At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century, 
while  all  the  other  countries,  including  so-called  be- 
nighted monarchies,  had  long  legislated  on  the  right 
of  association,  the  French  Republic  had  no  Association 
Law,  and  its  absence  was  one  of  the  standing  grievances 


112  The  Deterioration  of  France 

of  the  Socialists.  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  therefore 
placed  a  bill  for  the  regularization  of  associations  on 
the  table  of  the  Chamber.  This  bill  made  it  compul- 
sory for  every  association  not  already  approved  by 
previous  laws  or  decrees  to  state  its  object,  give  in  the 
names  of  its  members,  and  demand  a  special  authoriza- 
tion. A  great  many  religious  orders  like  the  Sulpitians, 
the  Christian  Brothers,  the  Sisters  of  Charity,  etc., 
had  long  been  approved,  and,  consequently  need  not 
apply  for  authorization,  but  hundreds  of  other  orders 
merely  existed  on  tolerance,  and  would  be  compelled  by 
the  new  law  to  put  in  a  declaration,  and  demand  an 
authorization,  which,  of  course.  Parliament  would  grant 
only  with  the  greatest  caution.  Among  the  number 
were  the  Jesuits  and  Assumptionists,  whose  doom  was 
inevitable,  whether  they  applied  for  an  authorization 
sure  to  be  refused,  or  preferred  the  simpler  course  of 
dispersing  of  their  own  accord. 

The  Association  Bill  only  became  law  in  1901.  Many 
religious  communities — like  the  Benedictines  now  at 
Quarr  Abbey,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight — thought  it  more 
dignified  to  leave  the  country  before  its  enactment,  and 
it  soon  appeared  that  this  had  been  wisdom  too;  the 
rest  submitted  to  the  law,  sent  in  the  names  of  their 
members  and  the  inventory  of  their  property,  and 
demanded  authorization.  But  as  they  did  so,  the  anti- 
religious  feeling  in  the  Chamber,  in  the  press,  and 
often  in  the  country,  became  worse  instead  of  decreas- 
ing. M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  appeared  more  and  more 
as  the  only  Moderate  in  his  Cabinet,  and  the  whole 
atmosphere  seemed  charged  with  threats.  It  was  ob- 
vious that  the  hatred  which  had  been  roused  by  the 
Affair  would  not  be  satisfied  until  revenge  had  been 
wreaked;  and  while  the  Prime  Minister  did  his  best  to 


Combism  113 

adjust  things  according  to  his  judicial  spirit,  it  seemed 
impossible  that  his  entourage  should  use  the  new  law  as 
a  law  and  not  as  a  weapon. 

12.     Combism 

The  general  election  of  1902  returned  a  stronger 
Socialist  group  than  there  had  been  in  the  outgoing 
Chamber.  M.  Waldeck- Rousseau  probably  felt  that 
his  supporters  might  soon  become  his  masters,  and  he 
would  not  take  the  risk.  He  went  out  before  the  new 
Chamber  met,  and  advised  President  Loubet  to  apply- 
to  M.  Combes  for  the  formation  of  a  new  Cabinet. 

M.  Combes,  though  he  never  was  in  orders,  had 
worn  the  clerical  habit  for  several  years  before  taking 
up  medicine,  and  gradually  politics,  in  the  department 
of  Charente.  Politics  had  introduced  him  to  Free- 
masonry, and  when  the  sometime  abbe  got  himself 
elected  a  deputy,  he  was  as  anti-clerical  as  could  be 
desired.  He  soon  specialized  in  educational  legislation, 
preparing  at  least  two  bills  of  a  decidedly  Erastian 
character,  and  not  afraid  of  the  drastic  appearance  he 
gave  to  their  application.  Nobody  said  anything 
against  his  integrity,  and  he  was  supposed  to^be  well 
informed.  But  whether  he  had  not  more  shrewdness 
than  intelligence,  and  more  obstinacy  than  real  will- 
power, was  a  problem  which  people  generally  solved 
against  him.  It  would  be  astonishing  that  such  a  man 
should  have  been  chosen  by  the  wise  Waldeck-Rous- 
seau,  if  it  were  not  an  historical  law  of  the  Third  Re- 
public that  its  leaders  are  led. 

As  I  said  above,  the  Socialist  party  was  stronger  in 
the  Chamber  of  1902  than  in  the  previous  one,  and  its 
leader  was  at  present  Jean  Jaures.     The  passage  of  M. 


114         The  Deterioration  of  France 

Millerand  through  office  had  done  what  it  invariably 
does  for  every  well-balanced  mind:  it  had  given  him  a 
sense  of  realities.  From  a  Socialist  with  the  usual 
systematic  views,  and  a  ringleader  with  the  proper 
amount  of  recklessness,  he  had  become  the  decided 
Reformist  he  has  been  since  as  Minister  of  Labour,  and 
the  patriot  he  showed  himself  as  Minister  of  War.  At 
any  rate,  he  was  regarded  in  1902 — when  people  still 
believed  that  Socialist  deputies  were  formidable  dare- 
devils ready  for  the  universal  overthrow  or  chambarde- 
ment — as  too  much  of  a  bourgeois  to  represent  the  party ; 
fiind  Jaur^s — who,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  converted 
bourgeois — ^had  taken  his  place. 

M.  Combes  chose  to  place  the  centre  of  his  majority 
as  near  as  possible  to  the  Extreme  Left,  and  immedi- 
ately Jaur^s  with  his  eloquence,  his  warm-heartedness, 
the  admixture  of  vagueness  and  audacity  of  his  con- 
ceptions, above  all,  with  the  tactical  dexterity  which 
his  turgidness  would  not  seem  to  indicate,  became  the 
real  leader  of  the  Cabinet.  Nobody  exemplified  to 
greater  perfection  the  true  Dreyfusist  spirit  as  distin- 
guished from  personal  devotion  to  Dreyfus.  He  had 
been  a  professor,  and  a  professor  of  philosophy — at  a 
time  when  philosophy  was  either  the  crudest  mechan- 
ism or  the  most  unreal  Idealism — and  his  tendency  was 
towards  the  latter  in  its  vaguest  form.  He  was  typically 
what  the  cant  of  the  day  called  an  "intellectual" — that 
is  to  say,  a  man  bred  in  the  purely  speculative  tradition 
of  the  early  Taine  and  the  early  Renan,  and  completely 
ignorant  of  other  realities  than  the  hagglings  and  bar- 
gainings of  parliamentary  groups  or  electoral  com- 
mittees. A  sort  of  prophet  withal,  but  a  prophet  in 
words,  not  in  true  visions;  his  rich,  organ-like  voice, 
the  volume  of  his  periods,  the  belief  in  his  words  which 


Combism  115 

such  men  frequently  have  because  of  the  real  though 
dim  conviction  existing  in  their  subconsciousness,  lent 
a  certain  efficiency  to  the  words  Progress^  Ideal,  Fra- 
ternity,  endlessly  repeated  in  his  speeches.  But  there 
was  no  divine  insight  in  him,  and  his  power  depended 
on  his  voice.  Thus  equipped,  he  went  on  preaching  the 
abolition  of  classes,  of  hatreds,  of  frontiers  of  all  kinds; 
he  prophesied  the  reign  of  justice  and  the  end  of  war, 
of  gold,  of  superstition.  The  Dreyfus  Affair,  with  the 
outburst  of  generosity  it  had  created,  leading  the 
French  to  sacrifice  everything  dearest  to  them  to  one 
man  for  the  sake  of  justice,  seemed  to  him  the  beginning 
of  the  new  era,  and  as,  for  the  first  time,  he  had  behind 
him  forty  or  fifty  deputies,  it  seemed  as  if  all  his  pre- 
dictions were  half  fulfilled  already.  This  was  the  man 
to  whose  vote  the  new  Prime  Minister  was  not  afraid 
to  attach  his  destinies. 

For  if  the  word  Combism  connotes  a  spirit  and  the 
manifestations  of  that  spirit  which  the  following  chap- 
ters will  recapitulate,  it  also  represents  a  political  sys- 
tem which  had  never  been  tested  before,  and  which 
lasted  during  three  years.  No  Prime  Minister  ever 
realized  so  perfectly  as  M.  Combes  that  he  was  nothing 
but  an  intermediary  between  the  pleasure  of  the  Cham- 
ber and  the  administration  of  affairs,  or  acted  as  con- 
sistently with  that  belief.  Every  day  the  Cabinet 
would  meet  as  usual  at  the  Elysee,  and  the  routine  of 
government  seemed  to  be  the  same  as  ever;  but  every 
day  also  a  consultation  of  a  much  more  practical 
character  was  held  at  the  Chamber  or  in  the  Premier's 
office.  There  M.  Combes  met  the  chiefs  or  whips  of  the 
various  groups,  not,  of  course,  in  the  whole  Chamber, 
but  in  the  majority;  submitted  to  them  the  order  of 
the  day,  took  their  opinion,  made  sure  by  a  very  simple 


ii6         The  Deterioration  of  France 

calculation  of  the  number  of  votes  that  each  opinion 
represented,  and  decided  upon  ministerial  action  ac- 
cordingly. This  substitution  of  a  few  influential  depu- 
ties for  the  Cabinet  nullified,  of  course,  the  power  of  the 
President,  that  of  the  Senate,  the  responsibility  of  the 
Ministers,  and  the  will  of  that  portion  of  the  country 
which  the  minority  platonically  represents ;  all  this  was 
in  the  true  Jacobin  tradition,  but  it  was  also  in  the 
spirit  of  the  constitution  logically  interpreted,  and 
protests  were  few  and  feeble. 

It  was  natural  that  in  these  daily  conventions  M. 
Jaures  should  be  the  principal  orator.  One  sign  to  his 
group  would  have  been  enough  to  bring  about  the 
downfall  of  the  Cabinet,  and  the  Socialist  leader  occu- 
pied the  privileged  situation  of  the  man  who  all  the  time 
sacrifices  his  real  wishes  to  those  of  the  less  daring  men 
he  condescends  to  support.  In  fact,  the  three  years  of 
M.  Combes's  office  were  also  the  three  years  of  M. 
Jaures's  hegemony.  Until  1905,  the  policy  of  the 
Cabinet  was  exactly  that  which  would  have  been 
adopted  had  the  Socialist  leader  been  the  actual 
Premier,  and  popular  feeling  was  not  deceived  by 
appearances.  The  singing  at  official  ceremonies  of 
the  Internationale  instead  of  the  Marseillaise,  in  the 
presence  of  the  undisturbed  Prime  Minister,  was 
the  clear  manifestation  of  the  true  state  of  affairs.  But 
the  reader  ought  not  to  infer  that  Socialist  legislation 
was  continuously  passed  during  that  period.  In  1902, 
the  Socialists,  being  for  the  first  time  in  unquestioned 
ascendancy,  appeared  formidable  both  from  their  loud 
doctrine  and  their  number.  But  since  then,  we  have 
realized  that  a  Socialist  deputy  is  a  bourgeois  even  if  he 
was  a  workman  a  few  weeks  before ;  we  have  also  heard 
M.  Jaures  repeatedly  promise  what  he  called  "a  vast 


Combism  117 

legislative  text,"  embodying  his  doctrine  for  practical 
purposes,  and  we  have  seen  him  everlastingly  evade 
the  fulfilment  of  his  promise;  for  years  he  conducted 
the  work  of  the  Chamber  without  even  producing  an 
Income  Tax  Law.  We  are  not,  therefore,  very  much 
surprised  to  find,  on  looking  back  to  the  history  of 
Combism,  that  it  was  much  more  a  systematic  destruc- 
tion than  a  rebuilding  of  society.  In  fact,  the  next 
chapters  will  be  exclusively  filled  with  what  the  Cham- 
ber did  against  this  or  that ;  and  I  should  be  very  much 
at  a  loss  to  state  any  improvement  or  even  any  positive 
step  due  to  its  initiative. 

In  what  spirit  all  this  destruction  was  carried  on 
is  not  clear  to  everybody.  If  you  read  the  reminis- 
cences of  men  like  M.  Peguy  or  M.  Daniel  Halevy,  or 
if  you  listen  to  less-known  witnesses  of  the  Dreyfusist 
drama,  you  will  often  be  led  to  conclude  that  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  genuine  Idealism  and  true  human 
kindness  was  wasted  during  those  eventful  years.  But 
if  you  go  back  to  the  newspapers  of  the  period,  dip  into 
the  Parliamentary  proceedings  in  the  Officiel,  or  con- 
sult your  own  impression  of  the  atmosphere  created  by 
M.  Combes's  brutality,  ill-breeding,  recklessness  are  the 
words  which  come  naturally  to  your  lips.  The  chief 
motive  of  the  action  of  the  politicians  seems  to  have 
been  the  delight  of  going  to  work  violently  without  any 
danger  to  themselves,  and  the  Idealism  appears  only  to 
have  been  the  cherished  illusion  of  a  few  individuals, 
cleverly  used  by  Jaures  to  cover  the  vulgarity  of  the 
rest.  Yet  thousands  of  excellent  Frenchmen  who  had 
been  convinced  Dreyfusists  remained  in  the  Dreyfusist 
state  of  mind  long  after  Dreyfusism  had  passed  into 
Combism,  and  looked  on  the  policy  of  revenge  without 
being  able  to  make  up  their  minds  that  they  connived 


ii8         The  Deterioration  of  France 

at  an  anti-patriotic  work.  Even  at  the  present  day 
the  bewilderment  in  which  they  found  themselves 
leaves  them  doubtful  and  hesitating  where  men  with  a 
larger  share  of  the  national  temperament  will  not 
waver  a  moment. 

13.     Comhism  and  the  Church 

The  quarrel  of  the  Dreyfusists  was  apparently  with 
the  army,  but  it  was  also  with  the  Church,  which  had 
abetted  the  officers,  and  M.  Combes's  anti-clerical  feel- 
ings, along  with  the  opportunity  which  the  Association 
Law  offered,  were  sure  to  keep  his  attention  at  first 
on  the  religious  orders.  We  know  with  certitude  what 
M.  Waldeck-Rousseau's  intentions  had  been  with  re- 
gard to  them.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  the  Jesuits, 
and  he  felt  an  especial  dislike  against  the  Assumption- 
ists,  whom  he  had  once  described  as  "trading,  plotting 
monks."  About  these  his  mind  was  evidently  made 
up.  There  was  also  a  clause  in  the  Association  Law 
which  its  author  must  have  known  to  be  irreconcilable 
with  the  continuance  of  the  more  important  orders. 
The  Benedictines,  Franciscans,  Dominicans,  etc.,  are, 
like  the  Jesuits,  responsible  only  to  the  Pope,  and 
highly  value  their  exemption  from  episcopal  jurisdic- 
tion. Now,  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  wanted  all  orders 
to  be  in  future  under  the  bishops  who  should  answer  to 
the  Government  for  their  action.  This  condition,  of 
course,  made  authorization  an  impossibility  for  those 
who  would  not  or  could  not  renounce  their  privilege. 
In  spite  of  this  unfortunate  circumstance,  it  seemed  that 
the  Act  was  bringing  the  orders,  which  the  Concordat 
of  1802  had  ignored,  under  the  protection  which  the 
same  Concordat  bestowed  on  the  bishops  and  secular 


Combism  and  the  Church  119 

clergy.  In  fact,  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  had  been  able 
to  say  without  fear  of  contradiction,  that  he  was  giving 
the  monks  and  nuns  their  saving  charter.  For  there 
was  little  doubt  that  the  congregations  that  appHed  for 
authorization  would  easily  get  it,  and  they  were  by  no 
means  degrading  themselves  by  submitting  to  a  mea- 
sure which,  with  one  exceptional  clause,  was  only  the 
common  law  of  the  land.  It  must  be  confessed  that  the 
exception  to  which  I  am  alluding,  was  not  in  keeping 
with  the  rest  of  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau's  liberal  dis- 
positions. Whereas  authorization  would  be  granted  to 
an  individual  order  only  by  an  Act  of  Parliament  and 
after  a  debate  in  the  Chamber  or  Senate,  the  same  could 
always  be  revoked  by  a  decree  from  the  Council  of 
Ministers;  so,  it  took  the  consent  of  the  country — as 
represented  by  Parliament — to  give  legal  existence  to  a 
religious  association,  but  an  arbitrary  act  of  the  Gov- 
ernment was  enough  to  withdraw  it.  This  certainly 
was  not  democratic,  but  it  could  be  interpreted  as  a 
barrier  against  clericalism,  and  not  an  obstacle  in  the 
way  of  the  religious  life  of  the  country.  On  the  whole, 
when  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  retired,  the  views  of  Gov- 
ernment in  connection  with  Catholicism  might  be  con- 
strued as  hardly  different  from  those  which  prevailed 
in  the  days  when  the  sovereign  could  be  on  his  guard 
against  episcopal  interference,  without  disbelieving  a 
word  of  the  bishops'  teaching. 

All  this  assumed  a  completely  different  appearance 
the  moment  M.  Combes  took  office,  and  the  Association 
Law,  instead  of  a  charter,  became  a  weapon  which  the 
new  Prime  Minister  handled  sometimes  brutally,  some- 
times with  astuteness,  changing  freely  besides  its 
interpretation  and  even  its  letter.  The  law  said  that 
each  demand  for  authorization  was  to  be  separately 


I20         The  Deterioration  of  France 

examined  by  the  Chamber  or  Senate.  M.  Combes  de- 
cided that  all  the  applications  should  be  thrown  into 
three  sections,  and  not  examined  separately,  but  ac- 
cepted or  rejected  in  a  lump.  This  showed  the  evident 
intention  to  make  short  work  of  the  orders,  and  the 
issue  did  not  belie  the  forecast.  It  will  remain  in  the 
history  of  France  as  a  monstrous  injustice  that  a  law 
should  have  been  used  as  a  decoy,  even  if  it  had  not 
been  devised  as  one.  All  the  applications  were  rejected, 
the  confiscation  of  the  property  of  religious  orders  was 
pronounced,  and  the  lamentable  sight  of  the  dispersion 
of  poor  monks  and  nuns  who  had  always  lived  in  com- 
munities began  to  sicken  all  except  politicians.  The 
religious  who  had  some  hope  of  being  able  to  reform 
themselves  abroad  left  France  for  England,  Belgium, 
Spain,  Italy,  or  America.  The  rest  were  compelled  to 
stay  singly  where  they  were,  in  great  risk  of  the  calami- 
ties which  M.  Rene  Bazin  describes  in  VIsolee. 

There  was  a  universal  feeling  of  compassion  among 
those  who  could  do  nothing  to  remedy  this  state  of 
affairs,  but  M.  Combes  found  numberless  apologists 
in  Parliament  and  in  the  press.  Those  who  observed 
the  public  spirit  at  that  time  were  shocked  to  find  how 
easily  the  average  man  gets  reconciled  to  injustice  the 
moment  it  is  done  and  the  ghost  of  a  reason  can  be 
found  for  it.  The  reason  in  this  case  was  an  ideology  in 
the  truest  spirit  of  the  Revolution.  Man,  it  was  argued, 
is  entitled  to  as  much  freedom  as  will  not  be  hurtful  to 
his  neighbour,  but  it  does  not  follow — as  would  at  first 
sight  appear — that  monasticism  should  be  tolerated  on 
the  pleas  that  a  man  may  be  a  monk  if  he  chooses  to 
become  one.  The  other  side  of  the  argument  is  that 
ndbody  ought  to  be  suffered  to  renounce  his  own  per- 
sonality by  taking  the  vows  of  obedience,  poverty,  and 


Combism  and  the  Church  121 

celibacy.  As  a  conclusion,  it  appeared  that  M.  Combes 
had,  after  all,  been  a  champion  of  liberty  and  a  redeemer 
of  slaves,  even  if  he  acted  rather  too  energetically. 

There  was  another  corollary  which  was  even  more 
logical.  If  the  religious  vows  were  so  immoral  that 
their  immorality  warranted  the  refusal  of  authorization 
to  the  orders  which  applied  for  it,  that  must  be  a 
sufficient  reason  for  the  withdrawal  of  authorization 
from  those  which  already  possessed  it.  The  principle — 
strictly  a  jurist's  principle — of  the  Act  of  1901,  was 
against  this  further  step,  but  the  Premier  might  plead 
that  the  Act  contained  a  clause  empowering  the  Cabi- 
net to  withdraw  authorization  whenever  they  thought 
it  advisable ;  and  besides,  another  bill  could  easily  be 
introduced  to  amend  the  Act.  In  fact,  in  March,  1904, 
a  bill  was  read,  depriving  the  teaching  orders — already 
authorized — of  their  legal  existence.  It  was  passed  in 
July  of  the  same  year,  and  immediately  the  process  of 
expulsion  and  confiscation  was  resumed. 

The  whole  proceeding  reminded  one  forcibly  of  the 
terrible  anecdote  of  the  Toulon  massacres  in  1793. 
The  royalist  prisoners  had  been  arranged  in  a  compact 
square  on  the  parade  ground,  and  the  commissaires 
ordered  artillery  to  be  fired  at  them  until  nobody  was 
left  standing.  Then  the  commissaires  walked  up  to  the 
awful  spot,  and  fearing  lest  some  of  the  prisoners  should 
pretend  death  and  meditate  flight,  they  called  out  loud : 
**Let  those  who  are  not  dead  get  up,  the  Republic 
pardons  them."  Here  and  there  a  few  men  rose  from 
the  heap,  and  were  promptly  cut  down  again. 

Placing  a  whole  category  of  citizens  outside  the  law 
for  so-called  philosophical  reasons,  expulsions,  confisca- 
tions, are  of  a  poor  moral  effect  in  a  country.  The 
immediate  consequence  of  the  religious  persecution  was 


122  The  Deterioration  of  France 

to  sharpen  the  appetites  of  the  Socialists  in  and  out  of 
Parliament,  and  to  persuade  them  that  the  nationaliza- 
tion of  the  larger  enterprises — the  railways,  mines,  etc. 
— could  be  accomplished  without  danger.  But  there 
was  another.  The  monastic  orders  were  the  chief  instru- 
ment of  French  influence  abroad,  especially  in  the  East, 
and  the  damage  to  this  influence  soon  became  per- 
ceptible, and  in  a  few  years  appeared  irreparable.  The 
Government  had  not  been  logical  enough  to  apply  to 
the  communities  at  Constantinople  or  Beyrout  the 
treatment  they  dealt  to  the  sister  convents  in  Paris, 
but  it  was  inevitable  that  the  suppression  of  the 
novitiates  at  home  should  promptly  reduce  the  numbers 
of  the  religious  abroad.  Due  warning  was  given  on 
this  point  to  the  Chamber  by  M.  de  Mun,  M.  Denys 
Cochin,  and  other  specialists  on  the  Eastern  questions; 
it  was  clearly  pointed  out  that  the  gradual  stepping  in 
of  the  excommunicate  King  of  Italy  with  his  monks 
and  nuns,  which  we  have  seen  of  late  years,  was  a 
certainty ;  but  the  majority  of  M.  Combes  had  already 
taken  the  habit  of  answering  such  arguments  with  the 
superb  disdain  of  ignorance  and  stupidity  by  the  crush- 
ing remark  that  foreign  considerations  ought  not  to  be 
suffered  in  the  home  politics  of  France.  It  is  the  classic 
speech  of  the  madman,  who  sets  his  house  on  fire,  to  the 
neighbours  who  send  for  the  fire  brigade. 

14.     Combism  and  Rome 

The  clause  in  the  Association  Law  which  substituted 
the  Bishops  for  the  Pope  as  answerable  for  the  doings  of 
the  monastic  orders  amounted  to  a  solemn  declaration 
of  mistrust  against  Rome,  and  the  logic  of  Combism  was 
sure  to  evolve  a  legislation  from  it.     It  had  long  beep 


Combism  and  Rome  123 

the  habit  of  the  Radicals,  with  M.  Clemenceau  as  their 
mouthpiece,  to  speak  of  the  Pope  as  a  foreign  sovereign 
with  a  permanent  army  of  his  own  in  France,  and  of 
the  Concordat  as  a  fooHsh  agreement  which  devoted 
forty  million  francs  every  year  to  the  maintenance  of  a 
hostile  clergy.  Such  an  absurdity  ought  to  be  done 
away  with  without  delay;  the  French  Embassy  to  the 
Vatican  must  be  suppressed,  the  clergy  left  to  its  own 
devices,  and  the  practice  of  the  Catholic  religion  reduced 
to  an  individual  concern.  Many  who  held  this  thesis 
were  merely  indifferent  to  religion,  and  the  apparent 
logic  of  Disestablishment,  combined  with  the  usual 
French  ignorance  of  European  consequences,  seduced 
them.  Many  others,  however,  among  whom  no  doubt 
M.  Clemenceau,  Jaures,  and  generally  the  Freemasons, 
hoped  and  often  professed  their  hope  that,  the  support 
of  the  State  once  removed,  the  mouldy  fabric  of  the 
Church  would  crumble  to  pieces,  and  science  would  be 
rid  of  the  vain  appearance  which  still  stood  between 
it  and  the  popular  consciousness.  A  few  intelligent 
politicians  would  answer  the  champions  of  destruc- 
tion by  pointing  out  that  the  suppression  of  the  Con- 
cordat meant  the  loss  for  France  of  the  long-valued 
protectorate  of  the  Catholic  Missions.  A  few  jurists 
had  an  even  more  positive  objection.  The  Concordat, 
they  said,  was  a  contract;  when  it  was  signed  in  1802, 
the  Government  of  France,  which  at  the  time  did  not 
profess  to  be  exceptionally  religious,  was  as  anxious  to 
see  it  in  operation  as  the  Pope,  and  consequently  this 
contract  could  not  be  dissolved  without  a  mutual  con- 
sent; as  to  the  forty  millions  yearly  paid  to  the  clergy, 
they  were  by  no  means  a  salary,  they  were  a  special 
fund  consolidated  at  the  time  of  the  Concordat  to 
prevent  the  clergy  from  suing  the  possessors  of  their 


124         The  Deterioration  of  France 

property,  and  the  true  name  of  this  fund  was,  it  should 
not  be  forgotten,  the  Church  Indemnity.  Finally,  there 
was  the  objection  of  the  Galileans — still  more  numerous 
than  might  have  been  supposed — who  asked:  What 
purpose  will  be  gained  by  making  the  clergy  entirely 
Roman  instead  of  being  national?  If  you  are  afraid 
of  the  Pope's  influence  in  the  present  arrangement, 
how  much  more  ought  you  not  to  dread  it  under  a 
regime  which  would  leave  it  unrestrained ;  of  course,  you 
can  counteract  this  influence  by  forcible  measures, 
but  your  action  will  inevitably  wear  the  appearance  of 
a  persecution,  and  persecution  is  invariably  ephemeral 
because  it  is  repellent;  after  a  time  you  will  find  the 
Church  embittered  against  you  and  less  hampered  in 
her  action  than  she  ever  was  under  the  Concordat;  do 
not  give  up  the  reality  for  a  hope ;  keep  your  hold  upon 
her  by  preserving  the  right  to  appoint  her  bishops. 

All  this  common  wisdom  was  wasted  on  people 
whom  the  intoxication  of  destruction  was  gaining 
more  and  more.  Pretexts  were  sought  to  warrant 
the  recall  of  the  ambassador  to  the  Vatican.  A  poor 
one  was  found  in  1904  in  a  correspondence  which  the 
Pope  had  directly — ^instead  of  through  the  Ministry  of 
Cults — with  two  bishops  whose  private  life  gave  offence 
to  their  flocks.  M.  Delcasse  wrote  a  short  letter  to  the 
Secretary  of  State  of  Pope  Pius  X,  stating  that  as  the 
Vatican  chose  to  correspond  direct  with  the  bishops, 
no  French  representative  was  necessary  in  Rome. 
Almost  immediately  the  Concordat  was  denounced 
and  a  special  bill — the  Cultural  Association  Bill — was 
introduced  to  take  its  place.  The  whole  of  this  bill 
was  inspired  by  the  childish  desire  to  legislate  about  the 
clergy  without  even  naming  the  Pope  or  the  Bishops, 
and  by  replacing  them  by  associations  of  lay  people  who 


Combism  and  Rome  125 

would  be  a  sort  of  protecting  barrier  between  the  State, 
and  the  unapproachable  clergy.  This  Bill,  passed  in 
the  summer  of  1905,  was  to  be  enforced  a  year  after, 
but  after  a  year  the  Pope  would  not  let  the  French 
clergy  recognize  a  constitution  which  ignored  their 
bishops,  and  the  Separation  Law  remained  hanging  in 
the  air  without  anyone  to  apply  it  to.  Immediately 
the  bishops  were  turned  out  of  their  palaces  and  the 
priests  out  of  their  rectories — which  I  must  say  they 
would, only  have  kept  a  few  years  longer  had  the  law 
been  acted  upon.  The  Church  property  was  con- 
fiscated and  made  over  to  the  municipal  councils ;  even 
the  foundations  for  the  dead,  held  so  sacred  by  the 
people,  were  given  a  secular  destination.  As  to  the 
churches,  the  Government,  not  daring  to  take  them 
away  entirely  from  their  occupants,  made  them  over  to 
the  parishes  on  condition  that  they  should  not  be  used 
for  secular  purposes. 

The  whole  thing  was  conducted  roughly  and  brutally 
whenever  it  appeared  safe.  The  Government  was  not 
ashamed  to  have  the  archives  of  the  Nuncio — left  in 
Paris  after  his  departure — seized  by  the  police,  and  the 
correspondence  of  the  Secretary  of  State  since  the 
Separation  was  published  in. the  newspapers. 

The  scandal  of  such  a  method  was  bad  enough, 
but  the  effects  of  the  Separation  were  not  visible  at 
once.  It  took  a  few  years  to  see  how  the  process  of 
confiscation  had  scared  people,  how  deep  the  appropri- 
ation of  Church  property  had  made  the  divisions 
between  believers  and  unbelievers  in  rural  parishes, 
how  the  sight  of  the  parish  priest  turned  out  of  his  little 
house,  of  the  bishop  dispossessed  of  a  palace  which  was 
frequently  part  of  the  cathedral,  had  created  mistrust 
against  the  politicians,  and  anxiety  among  the  faithful. 


126         The  Deterioration  of  France 

It  took  even  longer  for  many  of  the  deputies  who  had 
supported  the  Separation  Bill  from  indifference  to 
religion  to  see  that  the  resolution  to  govern  a  CathoHc 
country  in  complete  ignorance  of  the  Pope — ^while 
Protestant  monarchs  frequently  felt  the  need  of  a  repre- 
sentative in  Rome — was  suicidal.  In  time,  however, 
it  appeared  that  Italy,  Germany,  and  Spain  were  seiz- 
ing every  opportunity  to  substitute  their  protectorate 
for  that  of  France  in  Asia  Minor  and  Northern  Africa ; 
and  the  moment  the  Morocco,  campaign  began  in  earn- 
est it  was  a  grievous  annoyance  for  the  French  officers 
to  see  that,  owing  to  the  obstinacy  of  the  Government, 
the  priests  who  followed  the  army  and  took  advantage 
of  its  advance  were  not  French  but  Spanish. 

The  politicians  who  had  brought  about  this  state  of 
affairs  never  seemed  to  regret  their  blindness  imtil 
quite  recent  times.  Most  of  them  thought  only  of 
making  the  most  of  the  weakened  condition  of  the 
Church  to  do  away  with  the  Christian  belief.  The 
government  of  M.  Combes  was  the  heyday  of  the 
Universites  Populaires  in  which  night  after  night  pro- 
fessors thought  they  did  a  great  service  to  their  country 
by  proving  scientifically  to  suburban  audiences  that 
God  does  not  exist. 

15.     Comhism  and  the  Army 

The  grudge  which  the  government  of  M.  Combes  had 
against  the  Church  they  had  even  in  a  bitterer  degree 
against  the  Army.  There  had  always  been  a  lurking 
antagonism  between  the  Third  Republic  and  the 
military  element.  The  true  founders  of  the  Republic, 
the  friends  of  Gambetta,  looked  askance  at  those  hund- 
reds of  thousands  who  said  nothing,  whose  political 


Combism  and  the  Army  127 

sympathies  were  unknown  or  were  only  too  easy  to 
divine,  who  preferred  the  superiority  of  silence,  obedi- 
ence, and  self-denial,  while  politicians  were  nothing 
but  talk,  self-assertion,  and  bare-faced  interest.  Year 
after  year  two  hundred  thousand  young  men,  electors 
of  to-morrow,  were  absorbed  into  that  powerful  body 
and  taught  to  think  nothing  of  words  and  be  prepared 
for  deeds.  Professional  Democrats  living  in  everlasting 
terror  of  "the  Man, "  the  possible  Napoleon  who  would 
make ,  short  work  of  their  edifice  of  abstractions,  felt 
that  he  must  be  there  and  might  any  day  reappear. 
The  priest,  the  magistrate,  and  the  scholar  were  the 
representatives  in  various  forms  of  the  same  ideal  built 
upon  order  and  making  for  the  restoration  of  order. 
That  this  tendency  was  essential  to  the  greatness  of 
France,  and  that  the  action  of  France  beyond  her  fron- 
tiers intimately  depended  on  it,  was  nothing  to  men 
with  whom  party  interests  alone  counted. 

It  is  not  surprising  therefore  that  the  Dreyfus  Affair, 
with  the  scandal  of  the  Henry  forgery,  filled  them  with 
unbelievable  joy,  and  that  the  verdict  given  at  Rennes 
after  the  second  judgment  of  the  Court-Martial — which 
they  thought  must  inevitably  result  in  something  like  a 
solemn  recantation — once  more  infuriated  them.  The 
combination  of  this  spite  with  the  more  subtle  spirit 
spread  by  Jaur^s  resulted  in  a  campaign  which  even 
outlived  Combism — ^for  it  lasted  until  1910 — and  had 
for  its  obvious  object  not  only  to  humble  and  even 
humiliate  the  army  before  the  civic  element,  but 
entirely  to  change  its  temperament  and  lower  its  ideal 
through  what  was  called  progressive  democratization. 

It  is  painful  to  relate  that  the  work  of  retaliation  was 
begtm  by  General  de  Gallifet,  a  true  soldier,  and  in 
many   ways  a   true   aristocrat,   whom   M.   Waldeck- 


128  The  Deterioration  of  France 

Rousseau  had  selected  to  liquidate  the  Dreyfus  Affair. 
Gallifet  did  away  with  the  Superior  Council  of  War, 
an  admirable  organism  created  by  M.  de  Freycinet — 
who  was  not  a  soldier — for  the  examination  of  the  most 
vital  military  questions  and  the  promotion  of  the 
likeliest  officers.  From  that  date,  the  decision  on  the 
most  momentous  issues  was  left  entirely  to  the  Minister 
of  War,  who  might  be  a  civilian  and  would  seldom  be 
very  long  in  office. 

Yet  the  successor  of  Gallifet  at  the  end  of  1899  was 
not  a  civilian,  and  he  remained  in  office  until  1904,  but 
it  was  unfortunately  to  the  detriment  of  the  army. 
General  Andre  had  had  a  brilliant  career,  which  the 
envied  direction  of  the  Ecole  Poly  technique  had  crowned, 
but  it  was  the  career  of  a  functionary  not  of  a  soldier. 
General  Andre  had  never  been  in  the  colonies,  the  only 
place  where  he  might  have  learned  what  men  like 
Duchesne  or  Gallieni  knew  so  well;  he  was  a  theorist 
with  a  marked  tendency  to  be  a  politician,  and  when  he 
took  office,  it  was  well  known  that  unfortunate  habits 
of  intemperance  weakened  what  good  points  he  might 
have.  The  present  writer  was  a  witness  of  a  painful 
scene  in  the  Chamber  between  him  and  M.  Lasies,  an 
ex-officer,  in  which  he  appeared  as  unmilitary  as  on 
the  day  when  another  deputy,  Syveton,  hit  him  in  dis- 
gust and  contempt  before  the  whole  Assembly.  As  it  is, 
nobody  can  say  more  for  him  than  that  he  spent  a  great 
deal  of  labour  over  the  realization  of  the  military  ideas 
of  the  one  man  who  provided  ideas  for  all  the  members 
of  the  Combes  Cabinet,  M.  Jaures. 

The  division  between  two  men — the  Generalissime 
or  General-in-chief,  and  the  Chef  d'Etat-Major  or  Staff 
Commandant — of  the  supreme  power  in  case  of  a  war 
was  the  idea  of  General  Andr6,  and  it  was  undoubtedly 


Combism  and  the  Army  129 

the  idea  of  a  man  who  mistrusted  generals  and  wanted 
to  subordinate  their  authority  to  that  of  the  Govern- 
ment. The  same  mistrust,  in  the  purest  Dreyfusist 
spirit,  appeared  even  more  visibly  in  the  repeated 
attempts  at  doing  away  with  the  Courts-Martial  or 
introducing  into  them  enough  non-military  judges  to 
modify  completely  their  character.  But  these  mea- 
sures, the  evident  outcome  of  the  Dreyfus  Affair,  were 
nothing  compared  to  the  slow  and  methodical  progress 
of  what  was  called  the  democratization  of  the  army. 

No  general  could  have  shared  more  completely  in 
the  Socialists*  belief  that  war — ^after  thirty  years  of 
peace  and  the  abandonment  by  the  immense  majority  of 
the  French  of  every  idea  of  revenge  against  Germany — 
was  an  impossibiHty,  and  as  there  was  in  him  a  great 
deal  of  the  humanitarian's  zeal,  he  turned  it  towards 
a  new  conception  of  the  military  service.  Not  being  a 
preparation  for  war,  it  must  be  a  preparation  for  some- 
thing else,  and  the  regiments  became  a  kind  of  school, 
while  the  officers  were  expected  to  teach  their  men  all 
the  arts  of  peace.  Lectures  were  given  to  them  fre- 
quently, some  of  which — on  bee,  pigeon-raising,  or 
rabbit-breeding,  tor  instance — ^would  have  often  been 
much  better  if  they  had  been  the  work  of  experienced 
privates  instead  of  the  random  effort  of  their  chiefs  to  be 
useful  according  to  the  new  formula. 

The  regiments,  instead  of  being  frequently  trans- 
ferred, as  had  been  the  tradition  in  the  old  army,  were 
kept  in  the  same  towns,  and  the  recruits  never  were 
sent  away  from  their  native  districts. 

The  service,  which  in  the  first  years  of  the  Republic 
still  lasted  five  years,  had  been  gradually  reduced  first 
to  four  and  then  to  three  years.  Many  officers  de- 
clared that  a  new  reduction  was  impossible,  because  it 
9 


I30         The  Deterioration  of  France 

would  make  the  training  of  cavalry  men  impossible, 
and  above  all  because  the  numbers  of  the  French 
Army  would  become  ridiculous  compared  with  those  of 
the  enormous  military  masses  of  Germany.  But  this 
under  the  rule  of  M.  Jaur^s  was  no  argument,  since 
perfect  amity  prevailed  between  the  Socialists  in  the 
Reichstag  and  those  in  the  Chamber,  and  they  would 
not  allow  of  a  barbarous  breach  of  such  a  union.  Fi- 
nally the  service  was  curtailed  to  two  years,  and  the 
reduction  was  welcomed  even  more  jubilantly  by  politi- 
cians than  by  the  young  men  who  were  benefited  by  it. 
Meanwhile  the  effort  begun  by  General  Andre  to 
bring  down  the  officers  to  a  truly  democratic  level  was 
carried  on  methodically.  In  1907,  a  decree  was  pub- 
lished reforming  the  old  order  of  precedence  at  official 
ceremonies,  and  pushing  back  the  commandant  of  an 
army  corps  (of  which  there  are  only  twenty)  far  behind 
a  prefect  (of  whom  there  are  nearly  a  hundred).  The 
right  of  punishing  for  offences  in  the  service  was  con- 
siderably restricted;  the  officers'  mess-tables  were 
suppressed  so  that  officers  would  be  compelled  to  mix 
more  freely  with  the  civilians  in  garrison  towns;  the 
old  regulations  making  it  imperative  that  an  officer 
should  not  marry  into  a  family  unable  to  settle  a  certain 
sum  on  the  wife  were  abolished,  and  as  the  pay  re- 
mained ridiculously  insufficient,  the  social  background 
of  many  army  men  became  inferior  in  consequence. 
All  these  restrictions  tended  to  hamper  or  belittle  the 
army.  Something  worse  remained  to  be  done,  which 
was  to  lower  its  spirit.  The  methods  to  which  M. 
Combes  and  General  Andre  resorted  will  long  be  remem- 
bered as  excesses  of  which  even  an  Oriental  autocracy 
would  be  ashamed,  and  they  elicited  from  M.  Miller- 
and  the  famous  speech  in  which  he  branded  the  Combes 


Combism  and  the  Army  131 

government  as  a  regime  abject.  M.  Combes  was  not 
qualmish  about  methods.  He  seems  to  have  been  the 
inventor  of  the  delegues  canto  naux — unofficial  repre- 
sentatives of  the  prefects  in  every  chef -lieu  de  canton  y 
who  not  only  could  veto  the  decisions  of  municipal 
councils  and  mayors  by  reporting  them  at  headquarters, 
but  made  themselves  useful  as  discreet  informants,  i.e., 
in  plain  language,  spies. 

This  institution  was  extended  by  General  Andre 
to  the  army.  Scandalous  debates  in  the  Chamber, 
coming  after  the  revelations  of  a  clerk,  showed  to 
the  bewildered  public  that  the  Minister  of  War  had 
entrusted  to  the  Freemasons  the  police  of  the  army. 
The  Lodge  in  each  garrison  town  was  watching  the 
officers,  taking  note  of  who  went  to  church,  and  who  did 
not,  who  went  there  with  his  wife — which  was  venial— 
or  went  there  with  a  prayer-book — which  was  unfor- 
givable ;  who  paid  his  court  to  M.  le  Prefet  and  Madame 
la  Prefete,  and  who  kept  aloof  in  evident  disrespect 
to  the  Republic.  One  military  bootmaker  in  a  regi- 
ment was  an  accomplished  spy,  and  for  many  months 
practically  browbeat  all  his  chiefs.  In  a  few  cases, 
officers  who  were  Freemasons  demeaned  themselves 
lower  than  outside  observers  by  sheer  tale-bearing. 
In  a  short  time  there  was  in  the  army — which  gives  up 
the  franchise  so  as  not  to  seem  in  any  way  political — 
an  abominable  distinction  between  so-called  republican 
and  non-republican  officers,  and  a  feeling  of  mistrust 
prevailed  where  comradeship  had  been  for  so  many 
years  the  rule. 

The  consequence  was  that  the  officers  who  remained 
true  to  the  ideal  which  had  attracted  so  many  of  them 
into  the  army  after  1870  felt  numberless  frictions, 
while  the  noble  trade  of  soldiering  became  with  many 


132         The  Deterioration  of  France 

others  a  mere  metier.  And  this  metier  being  underpaid, 
it  was  natural  that  they  should  cast  about  for  remedies 
and  pecuniary  improvements.  There  were  no  other 
means  at  hand  than  those  used  by  everybody  else,  viz., 
agitation  and  association.  We- saw  the  appearance  of  a 
new  military  paper,  Armee  et  Democratie,  which  might 
have  been  the  organ  of  a  syndicate,  and  in  fact  its 
creation  was  promptly  followed  by  an  agitation  with 
a  view  to  the  creation  of  military  unions  similar  to 
the  trades  unions. 

So,  at  a  moment  when  the  conclusions  drawn  by 
experts  from  the  Manchurian  War  all  pointed  to 
the  superiority  of  character  over  mere  knowledge  and 
of  a  true  spirit  of  discipline  and  self-denial,  Combism 
demoralized  the  army,  made  officers  dissatisfied  with 
their  lot,  and  spread  the  selfishness  of  materialism 
through  the  milieu  in  which  sacrifice  had  traditionally 
been  at  home. 

The  Navy  was  as  badly  treated  as  the  Army.  Suffice 
it  to  recall  that  its  chief  was  the  journalist  Pelletan,  a 
man  whose  name  is  synonymous  with  reckless  levity, 
and  who  appeared  during  the  too  long  tenure  of  his 
office  as  the  worthy  compeer  of  General  Andre.  He 
had  been  famous  for  starting  and  organizing  strikes, 
and  it  was  under  his  government  that  the  Arsenal 
workers,  semi-military  as  they  were,  developed  the 
unruliness  for  which  they  became  celebrated.  M. 
Pelletan  had  also  ideas  of  his  own  concerning  the 
composition  of  the  fleet ;  their  chief  result  was  the  pass- 
age of  the  naval  power  of  France  from  the  second 
rank  to  the  fourth.  He  did  not  believe  more  than 
Andre  in  the  possibility  of  a  war,  and  the  navy  maga- 
zines were  as  empty  as  those  of  the  army.  In  191 3,  the 
deputy  Andre   Lefevre,    once   a   Socialist   but  a  true 


Combism  and  Patriotism  133 

patriot,  proyed  to  the  Chamber  that  at  the  end 
of  1905  there  was  only  ammunition  enough  for  each 
French  gun  to  shoot  seven  hundred  times.  One  of  the 
few  frontier  towns  supposed  to  defend  the  Ardennes 
gap — the  little  town  of  Avesnes  which  the  present 
writer  happens  to  know  well — was  so  destitute  of  stores 
of  all  kinds  that  it  took  four  months  and  a  half  of 
strenuous  efforts  to  replenish  its  magazines. 

The  Army  during  the  nightmare  of  those  years  was 
not  looked  upon  as  the  defender  of  France  that  all 
the  national  energies  ought  to  strengthen,  but  as  the 
antagonist  of  civic  society,  a  champion  of  belated  pre- 
judices, and  the  enemy  of  justice,  and  it  was  treated 
accordingly. 

16.     Combism  and  Patriotism 

The  old  patriotic  notion  which  identified  the  coimtry 
not  only  with  its  traditions  but  with  its  territorial  ^ 
limits;  the  pleasure  which  the  student  of  the  history  of- 
France  used  to  take  in  her  gradual  expansion  in  the 
course  of  ages ;  the  accent  in  which  true  patriots  would, 
like  Louis  XIV,  utter  her  name,  as  if  it  were  that  of  a 
sacred  spiritual  being — all  this  had  been  many  times 
ridiculed  as  limited  and  almost  barbarous.  Voltaire  in 
the  string  of  questions  which  he  entitled  Les  Pourguoi 
asked  two  or  three  questions  which  sound  like  anti- 
patriotism  long  before  the  anti-patriots,  and  the  early 
Socialists  of  course  placed  themselves  above  such 
hampering  notions.  I  have  explained  in  a  previous 
chapter  how  the  philosophy  of  Taine  and  Renan  in  the 
first  part  of  their  lives  implied  a  standpoint  irreconcil- 
able with  patriotism.  But  the  cynical  expression  of 
disdain  for  the  attachment  to  one's  country  was  not  to 


134         The  Deterioration  of  France 

be  heard  until  the  last  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
when  it  became  a  sort  of  elegance.  In  1 891,  in  the  ear- 
liest issues  of  the  Mercure  de  France  y  the  loyalty  to 
Alsace-Lorraine  was  derided  or  inveighed  against. 
Jules  Renard  wrote  that  in  a  short  time  the  war  of 
1870  would  be  considered  of  less  importance  than  the 
appearance  of  the  Cid,  or  even  of  a  fable  of  La  Fontaine. 

M.  Herold  said:  ^'If  one  were  sincere,  the  confession 
would  be  general  that  the  treaty  of  Frankfort  is  as 
remote  as  that  of  Utrecht."  The  well-known  M. 
Remy  de  Gourmont  was  more  direct,  and  said  that  the 
farce  of  the  two  sister  provinces  kneeling  at  the  frontier- 
post  had  lasted  long  enough  to  be  unbearable.  M. 
Bazalgette  said  coldly  that  every  cultivated  man  ought 
to  view  calmly  the  idea  of  seeing  his  own  country 
absorbed  by  another. 

Such  utterances  were,  it  is  true,  sporadic,  and  might 
frequently  be  construed  as  literary  exaggerations  which 
it  was  imcritical  to  take  literally.  But  a  speech  which 
had  also  been  printed  by  the  Mercure  de  France  must 
be  regarded  as  formulating  a  deep  and  widely  spread 
feeling,  for  it  was  admirably  in  keeping  with  the  haughty 
intellectualism  which  ran  high  at  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

I  only  recognize  the  value  of  intelligence  [it  said] ;  it  knows 
no  frontiers,  and  I  would  fain  sacrifice  the  lives  of  a  hundred 
French  fools  to  that  of  one  intelligent  man  from  anywhere. 
The  vaunted  integrity  of  the  national  soil  is  no  concern  of 
mine ;  the  little  nook  where  I  meditate  is  enough  for  me,  and 
the  territory  around  it  may  well  be  conquered,  it  will  leave 
my  thought  exactly  what  it  was. 

In  1904,  all  this  had  gradually  become  familiar.  The 
Sorbonne  was  entirely  devoted  to  the  scientific  methods 


Combism  and  Patriotism  135 

of  Germany,  and  the  reaction  produced  by  this  whole- 
sale adoption  of  literary  principles  not  native  was 
certainly  weakening  for  patriotism.  It  seems  almost 
incredible  that  a  professor  at  the  Ecole  Normale  Supe- 
rieure — a  Jew,  it  is  true — M.  Frederic  Rauh,  should 
have  conducted  a  scientific  investigation  with  his  pupils 
into  the  question:  "Was  patriotism  a  rational  feeling, 
and  did  it  bear  the  test  of  psychological  analysis?'* 
This  inquiry  resulted  in  an  almost  universal  negative. 
The  expression  of  patriotism  was  rejected  as  mere  ver- 
balism, and  the  sentiment  itself  was  declared  to  be  a 
superstition,  or  at  best  an  artistic  or  literary  fallacy. 
"Patriots,"  M.  Rauh  said,  "do  not  count;  they  are 
purely  sentimental.  Their  doctrine  is  in  flat  contra- 
diction with  mine,  and  I  would  much  rather  defend 
internationalism."  Yet,  the  professor  saw  that  this 
conclusion  was  practically  untenable,  and  introducing  a 
distinction  into  it  he  declared  that  to  stave  off  major 
evils  a  man  might  obey  the  military  law,  no  matter 
how  unjust.  Besides,  a  country  like  France  being  the 
apostle  of  Internationalism,  one  could  reasonably  wish 
and  work  for  its  continuation  lest  the  doctrine  of  Inter- 
nationalism itself  should  suffer  from  its  absorption 
into  less  philosophical  empires. 

There  were  no  protests  at  the  time,  not  even  from 
the  students,  hundreds  of  whom  must  have  heard  of  this 
doctrine  while  week  after  week  it  was  publicly  dis- 
cussed. The  Sorbonne  of  those  days  was  a  hotbed  of 
the  most  uncompromising  Dreyfusism.  Professors  like 
M.  Seignobos,  M.  Langlois,  M.  Andler,  and  above  all 
M.  Monod  were  so  Germanized  in  their  thoughts  and 
teaching  that  it  was  difficult  for  their  hearers  to  get  at 
what  might  be  left  of  sentiment  under  their  scientific 
principles,  and  Germany  acted  once  more  as  the  magnet 


136  The  Deterioration  of  France 

it  had  been  towards  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  Combes  government 
took  special  pleasure  in  showing  itself  above  aged 
prejudices.  The  presence  in  the  Cabinet  of  M.  Del- 
casse,  whom  all  Europe,  except  France,  knew  to  be 
planning  the  isolation  of  Germany,  would  occasionally 
elicit  criticism  from  the  very  sensitive  German  press, 
but  M.  Delcasse  was  nothing  to  M.  Jaures,  and  the 
latter  gave  complete  satisfaction  to  the  enemies  of  his 
country.  Whenever  there  was  the  least  cause  of 
friction  between  the  two  governments  he  was  seen  in 
the  tribune,  explaining  warmly  that  the  fault  was 
entirely  with  the  French  Foreign  Office.  He  spoke  in 
German  at  German  congresses,  constantly  referred  to 
the  point  of  view  of  the  German  "comrades,"  and 
certainly  was  more  popular  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Rhine  than  even  Bebel,  who  was  only  appreciated  by 
his  party.  I  said  before  that  on  several  occasions  the 
Internationale  was  sung  at  official  ceremonies  instead  of 
the  Marseillaise,  and  the  Prime  Minister  did  not  protest 
against  the  presence  of  the  Socialist  red  flag. 

The  favour  of  the  Ministers  of  Education  went 
to  the  teaching  recommended  by  M.  Jaures  and  his 
friends.  It  was  scientific;  that  is  to  say,  atheistic 
under  cover  of  the  other  epithet ;  and  rational,  that 
is  to  say,  frankly  anti-patriotic.  The  history  of  France 
until  1789  was  ignored.  French  children  under  the 
pretence  that  they  ought  not  to  have  their  memories 
crowded  with  bloody  battles,  useless  dates,  and  dry 
treaties,  knew  nothing  of  the  epic  of  their  country. 
But  they  were  carefully  informed  of  all  the  details  in  the 
history  of  the  Revolution  and  its  consequences,  that 
would  make  them  realize  how  nations  are  less  antagon- 


Combism  and  National  Culture       137 

istic  to  one  another  than  classes.  Jeanne  d'Arc  was  left 
out  as  a  barbarous  woirier,  but  the  Communists  were 
extolled. 

Nothing  can  show  so  much  both  the  hold  which 
internationalist  doctrines  had  taken  of  distinguished 
intellects  and  their  popularity  than  the  success  which, 
as  late  as  1907 — two  years  after  the  fall  of  Combes — 
welcomed  the  famous  book  of  M.  Anatole  France, 
Vile  des  Pingouins.  This  was  a  caricature  of  the 
history  of  France  conceived  in  the  coarsest  materialistic 
point  of  view  of  the  Socialists,  but  drawn  in  the  vein 
now  of  Rabelais  and  now  of  Voltaire,  and  deceiving  the 
unguarded  reader  about  its  essential  vulgarity  by  its 
cleverness.  That  a  writer  of  M.  France's  distinction 
should  have  taken  such  a  subject  and  handled  it  as  if 
he  had  dealt  with  the  Papimanes,  showed  to  what 
extent  the  certitude  of  peace,  the  cosmic  point  of  view, 
and  the  disdain  of  sentimental  superstitions  had  trans- 
formed the  country  not  only  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  but  of  the 
Revolutionary  volunteers  of  1792,  and  even  of  Michelet, 
humanitarian  as  he  was. 

17.     Combism  and  National  Culture 

The  catastrophe  of  1870,  and  the  diminished  political 
influence  which  followed  it,  had  left  untouched  the 
spiritual  Empire  of  France,  i.e.,  the  radiating  intelli- 
gence for  which  she  had  been  famous  since  the  days  of 
Brunetto  Latini.  It  belonged  to  the  destructive  spirit 
of  M.  Combes's  government  to  bring  even  that  into 
jeopardy. 

It  is  true  that  the  classical  culture  on  which  French 
literature  was  built  in  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and 
eighteenth  centuries  had  been  weakened  long  before  the 


138         The  Deterioration  of  France 

advent  of  M.  Combes  and  his  Socialists,  but  it  had  been 
through  imprudent  zeal,  not  through  enmity.  Latin, 
and  especially  Greek,  had  gradually  seemed  austere  to 
modem  generations  rendered  anaemic  by  the  newspaper 
and  the  novel,  and  an  attempt  had  been  made  to  teach 
them  through  pleasant  easy  methods.  It  was  not 
necessary,  the  reformers  argued,  to  take  all  the  trouble 
necessary  for  learning  how  to  speak  or  even  write  the 
classical  languages;  it  was  enough  if  one  could  read  their 
best  monuments.  Consequently  composition  in  Greek 
prose  and  verse,  and  translations  into  the  same  language 
were  discarded,  and  in  a  decade  or  two  the  very  estim- 
able school  of  French  Hellenists  which  had  risen  be- 
tween the  restoration  of  Greek  studies — towards  18 10 — 
and  1850  was  left  where  it  was,  and  mostly  employed  in 
preparing  a  vast  collection  of  cribs  which  the  next 
generation  was  to  use  in  default  of  personal  knowledge. 
Latin  was  not  treated  in  the  same  manner;  verses  and 
compositions  were  kept  up  until  about  1880,  but  the 
same  results  followed.  French  professors  in  those  days 
were  seldom  travelled  men,  and  seldom  knew  anything 
of  modern  languages.  So  personal  experience  could  not 
teach  them  what  a  thorough  study  of  the  classic  tongues 
had  taught  their  elders,  viz.,  that  no  language  is  ever 
mastered  unless  one  aims  at  possessing  it  like  a  native. 
The  consequence  was  that  the  ancient  texts  were  taught 
and  remembered  like  difficult  music,  which,  the  mo- 
ment the  boy  was  released  from  school,  vanished  from  his 
memory.  The  idea  that  one  was  learning  the  classical 
languages  disappeared  and  was  replaced  by  that  of 
being  exercised  in  them,  a  nuance  which  school  slang 
admirably  expresses  in  the  familiar  phrases,  jaire  du 
Latin,  faire  du  Grec.  On  the  whole  few  people,  except 
specialists,  knew  Latin  well,  and  hardly  anybody  had 


Combism  and  National  Culture       139 

more  than  the  poorest  smattering  of  Greek.  Gradually 
pupils  came  to  doubt  the  knowledge  of  their  masters, 
the  conclusion  that  if  nobody  knew  them  it  was  because 
they  were  impossible  to  master  became  general  if  sel- 
dom positively  stated,  and  boys,  parents,  and  even 
masters  had  an  uncomfortable  feeling  that  six  or  seven 
years  were  wasted  over  things  which  nobody  could 
honestly  say  he  had  succeeded  in  learning. 

So  at  last  the  reproach  of  uselessness  and — less 
definitely — that  of  being  demoralizing  were  made 
against  what  was  called  the  traditional  teaching,  which 
in  fact  was  nothing  more  than  the  mistake  of  one  or  two 
generations,  when  the  great  commercial  and  industrial 
expansion  universal  in  the  last  twenty  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  became  noticeable  in  France.  Immedi- 
ately over- logical  intellects  and  people  endowed  with  the 
superficial  common-sense  which  is  the  modem  form 
of  wisdom,  declared  that  young  Frenchmen  were  unpre- 
pared for  this  kind  of  opportunity.  They  had  no 
scientific  preparation,  and  they  did  not  know  modem 
languages;  all  their  education  had  to  be  made  over 
again,  and,  while  they  did  this,  luckier  competitors  fore- 
stalled them  everywhere.  This  was  the  time  when  M. 
Demolins  published  La  Superiorite  des  Anglo-Saxons, 
and  when  M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  untrue  to  himself,  threw 
the  classical  education  overboard  without  ceremony. 

It  was  a  singular  oversight  to  forget  that  the  French 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  trained  exclusively  in  the 
classics,  had  been  remarkable  colonizers  and  successful 
merchants.  It  was  even  more  inexplicable  that  French 
writers  should  complain  of  lack  of  scientific  preparation 
in  a  city  possessing  those  two  unrivalled  schools  of 
engineers:  the  Ecole  Polytechnigue  and  the  Ecole  Cen- 
trale.     They  did  not  see  that  if,  in  spite  of  the  compara- 


140         The  Deterioration  of  France 

tive  neglect  of  scientific  formation  in  educational 
methods,  the  French  easily  became  successful  mer- 
chants and  good  engineers,  it  must  be  because  their 
culture — whatever  it  might  be — at  all  events  prepared 
them  for  specialization.  This  all-important  considera- 
tion was  overlooked,  and  people  began  to  cry  for  a 
more  practical  syllabus  in  schools. 

However,  there  was  no  treason  in  this,  and  the  rights 
of  a  superior  culture  were  carefully  reserved  even  by  the 
most  strenuous  advocates  of  utilitarian  education.  It 
was  in  a  very  different  spirit  that  the  Socialist  politi- 
cians, unexpectedly  abetted  by  so-called  intellectual 
democrats  at  the  Sorbonne,  took  in  hand  what  they 
naturally  called  the  truly  republican  reform  of 
education. 

In  reality,  this  would-be  reform  was  nothing  else  than 
an  envious  insurrection  of  the  lower  tendencies  of  the 
democracy  against  culture  pure  and  simple.  The 
Socialists  and  Radicals  were  the  representatives  of 
classes  which  could  not  aspire  to  the  education  so  far 
identified  with  the  classics,  and  they  contended  that  as 
everybody  could  not  be  given  such  an  education,  it 
should  not  be  given  to  anyone.  Through  all  the  cam- 
paign which  they  made  against  classical  education,  one 
could  follow  this  strange  principle  in  all  its  crudeness. 
The  effort  of  past  generations  had  been  towards  mak- 
ing people  equal  by  raising  the  lower  ranks ;  it  was  to  this 
policy  that  we  owed  men  like  Amyot,  Rollin,  or  Diderot, 
not  to  speak  of  more  than  one,  J.  J.  Weiss,  in  recent 
times.  But  the  notion  of  mere  anarchists  could  not 
but  be  different  and  even  contrary;  order  seemed  more 
difficult  than  levelling,  and  levelling  in  consequence 
became  the  object.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  M. 
Jaurds,  who  was  a  scholar,  did  not  share  these  views, 


Combism  and  National  Culture       141 

but  he  was  the  kind  of  chief  who  follows  his  adherents, 
and  his  influence  availed  little  in  this  instance. 

There  was  surprise  at  the  reviving  of  an  old  argu- 
ment, which  could  pass  as  an  argument  only  at  an 
exceptionally  stupid  epoch. 

The  official  representatives  of  the  new  education  [wrote  a 
Sorbonne  professor]  have  long  maintained  that  Latin  ought 
to  be  ostracized,  and  that  its  banishment  must  be  the  work 
of  the  Republic.  There  is  between  the  Latin  tongue  and 
the  Church  too  intimate  a  bond — in  fact,  a  sort  of  filial 
relation.  The  Humanities  viewed  as  they  were  in  the  old 
school,  -and  old-fashioned  in  their  very  object  and  method, 
are  nothing  else  than  the  course  of  studies  which  the  Jesuits 
once  freed  from  scholasticism  for  the  use  of  society  people. 
In  fact,  modern  education  is  only  the  last  word  of  secu- 
larisation. 

This  Sorbonne  professor  was  no  other  than  M.  Ferdi- 
nand Brunot,  a  grammarian  and  lexicographer  of  world- 
wide repute,  and  it  must  have  taken  all  the  bigotry  of 
the  time  to  blind  such  a  man  to  the  sordidness  of  the 
thought  he  defended. 

But  the  Sorbonne,  with  the  exception  of  M.  Faguet 
and  a  few  others,  was  beneath  its  traditional  r61e  in  this 
emergency.  Most  of  its  professors  were  silent,  or  if 
they  spoke  up  it  was  for  the  new  fad.  M.  Lanson  was 
among  the  first  who  viewed  the  institution  in  which  he 
taught,  not  as  an  instrument  of  culture  but  as  a  place 
for  the  production  of  positive  erudition.  He  spoke  of 
his  class  as  a  scientific  atelier,  in  which  yoimg  men 
worked  under  his  guidance  for  restdts  similar  to  those 
obtained  at  the  German  universities.  Most  of  the  pro- 
fessors of  history  did  the  same,  and  the  word  seminar 
was  used  by  them  in  its  German  sense.     A  lad  fresh 


142         The  Deterioration  of  France 

from  school,  and  only  beginning  to  leam  how  to  learn, 
would  be  started  on  researches  the  final  outcome  of 
which  was  little  better  than  a  catalogue,  useful  no 
doubt  for  more  advanced  scholars  who  might  need  its 
information,  but  certainly  not  so  useful  for  its  author, 
only  the  year  before  a  mere  schoolboy,  with  the  school- 
boy's incredible  gaps  and  crudeness. 

Little  by  little  the  new  theories,  the  new  spirit,  and 
the  new  hatreds  passed  into  legislation.  In  1902,  the 
old  course  of  studies  was  replaced  by  a  completely 
different  one,  the  chief  feature  of  which  was  a  quadruple 
subdivision  making  Latin  and  Greek  optional,  while 
sciences  and  modern  languages  never  were,  and  en- 
abling a  boy  to  become  a  bachelier,  even  if  he  had  never 
been  inside  a  lycee,  and  only  knew  the  tuition  given  in 
the  higher  schools  of  the  elementary  degree.  This 
was  levelling  without  any  shame,  and  the  measure  was 
only  well  received  where  jealousy  is  a  principle.  Shortly 
after  a  reform  of  the  licence — the  degree  generall}''  taken 
after  two  years  at  a  university  and  qualifying  its 
possessor  for  teaching — ^made  it  possible  for  a  young 
man  to  become  a  professor  of  history  or  philosophy  not 
only  without  any  knowledge  of  Latin  or  Greek,  but  even 
without  having  ever  been  properly  tested  in  French 
composition.  This  was  the  new  culture.  Almost  at 
the  same  time  the  Ecole  Normale  Superieure  was  modi- 
fied to  an  extent  amounting  to  suppression.  It  had 
been  a  famous,  one  may  say  a  unique,  seminary  of 
the  most  refined  culture,  but  that  was  exactly  what 
drew  upon  it  the  animadversion  of  people  impatient  of 
any  kind  of  distinction.  There  ought  to  be  no  elite  in 
a  democracy. 

This  was  the  work  of  Combism  with  regard  to 
education.     All  the  outcry  for  light,  all  the  promise 


The  Blindness  of  Combism  143 

of  an  intellectual  training  for  the  children  of  the  demo- 
cracy resulted  in  destruction  and  in  the  monotony  of 
inferiority.  In  two  or  three  years  the  practical  results 
of  this  equalizing  appeared,  and  they  were  deplorable; 
young  men  trained  after  the  new  methods  might  know  a 
little  more  than  their  elders,  but  they  were  unprepared 
in  a  woeful  degree  for  learning  higher  things,  and  often 
discouraged  their  chief  or  employers  by  the  un- French 
slowness  of  their  minds  in  seeing  the  logical  concatena- 
tion of  ideas.  Strange  to  relate,  the  protest,  which 
had  not  come  from  Sorbonne  professors,  came  promptly 
enough  from  scientists,  physicians,  or  engineers,  and,  as 
we  shall  see,  was  more  productive  of  effects  than  awk- 
ward explanations  given  by  professionals. 

18.     The  Blindness  of  Combism 

The  spirit  which  the  science,  philosophy,  and  litera- 
ture of  the  Second  Empire  had  elaborated  for  a  danger- 
ous elite  was  let  loose  by  the  Third  Republic,  and  ranged 
freely  through  the  country,  while  selfish  and  inadequate 
parliaments  engrossed  by  their  petty  interests  forgot 
that  patriotism  means  attention  to  the  position  of  one's 
country  as  influenced  by  that  of  its  neighbours.  What 
the  Republicans  did  from  levity  until  1898,  the  Drey- 
fusists  and  Combists  did  out  of  perverseness  during 
the  seven  years  that  followed.  They  pushed  the 
Revolutionary  principles  to  their  utmost  consequences 
and  revelled  in  the  destruction  they  witnessed.  The 
humiliation  of  magistrates,  the  persecution  of  officers, 
the  banishment  of  priests  and  nuns,  all  this  acted  upon 
them  as  it  might  on  the  crudest  village  politician.  It 
satisfied  their  hatred,  and  their  intelligence  cared  little 
whether  it  had  not  terrible  effects  upon  the  country. 


144         The  Deterioration  of  France 

In  1904,  M.  Combes  fell  under  the  weight  of  universal 
contempt.  The  revelations  concerning  the  espionage 
in  the  army  had  sickened  even  the  least  squeamish,  and 
there  was  general  relief  when,  in  1904,  M.  Clemenceau 
literally  kicked  the  Premier  out  of  office  in  the  most  dis- 
dainful article  he  had  ever  written.  But  the  loss  of  their 
servant  or  valet  produced  little  effect  upon  the  Social- 
ists and  Radicals.  They  went  on  doing,  under  M. 
Rouvier,  the  work  they  had  undertaken  five  years 
before.  At  the  beginning  of  1905,  they  were  immersed 
in  the  joy  of  preparing  the  final  defeat  of  the  Church  by 
the  Separation  Law,  and  they  did  not  give  a  thought 
to  the  state  of  affairs  beyond  the  frontiers.  Never 
had  the  belief  in  the  fraternity  of  nations  been  more 
general.  M.  Jaures,  who  was  only  a  ranter  of  course, 
believed  in  it,  but  M.  Leon  Bourgeois,  whom  Europe 
regarded  for  fifteen  years  as  a  man  of  rare  intelligence, 
believed  in  it  too.  Nobody  remembered  that  individ- 
uals had  duties,  but  the  duties  of  peoples  were  the  sub- 
ject of  endless  philosophizing  with  men  so  ignorant  of 
history  as  not  to  know  that  nations  always  see  their 
duty  in  their  immediate  interest.  The  realities  of 
European  politics  were  limited  with  most  politicians  to 
the  system  of  agreements  patiently  knit  by  M.  Delcasse, 
and  this  view  was  perhaps  a  worse  delusion  than  plain 
humanitarianism.  France  wanted  no  war,  of  course, 
they  said  to  themselves,  seeing  that  every  year  she 
decreased  her  military  expenditure;  and  no  nation, 
however  imreasonably  inimical,  could  dream  of  making 
war  against  her  with  such  a  protecting  chain  of  alliances 
or  amities  round  her  frontiers.  There  was  therefore  no 
cause  for  anxiety,  and  France  had  only  to  go  on  mind- 
ing her  own  particular  mission,  which  was  to  look  after 
the  interests  of  mankind. 


The  Blindness  of  Combism  145 

Meanwhile  M.  Delcasse  carried  on  his  effort,  patriotic 
indeed,  but  in  a  less  egotistical  person,  an  effort  likely 
to  be  accompanied  with  tremors.  While  everybody 
else  was  speaking  of  peace,  while  the  Ministers  of  War 
and  of  the  Navy  proceeded  with  the  disarmament,  M. 
Delcasse  was  preparing  war,  and  he  knew  it;  and  he 
knew  that  Germany  knew  it.  While  politicians  dis- 
claimed every  Imperial  ambition,  there  was  a  French 
army  on  the  frontier  of  Morocco  which  meant  nothing 
if  it  was  not  territorial  expansion,  and  Germany  fol- 
lowed the  progress  of  this  army  with  increasing  jealousy. 

One  man,  indeed,  the  new  Premier,  M.  Rouvier,  a 
financier  with  the  financier's  rather  near-sighted  judg- 
ment, partly  realized  the  state  of  affairs.  He  was  early 
informed  that  M.  Delcasse's  plans  could  only  result 
in  trouble,  but  he  thought  the  situation  might  be  made 
less  dangerous  by  quietly  dealing  with  it,  by  giving 
assurances  to  the  German  Ambassador  and  possibly  to 
the  German  financiers.  It  never  occurred  to  him  that 
the  real  solution  was  to  warn  France,  or  at  least  the 
Parliament,  of  their  danger.  He  could  easily  have  done 
it.  The  year  before  one  of  the  best  staff  officers  in  the 
army.  General  de  Negrier,  had  sent  in  his  resignation 
because,  as  he  put  it,  "the  Eastern  frontier  was  sup- 
posed to  be  protected,  and  in  reality  was  not."  It 
belonged  to  the  head  of  government  to  bring  home 
to  the  Chamber  the  truth  which  this  frank  declaration 
of  a  true  soldier  held  in  so  concise  a  form.  The  effect  no 
doubt  would  have  been  immediate.  But  M.  Rouvier 
would  rather  leave  the  Chamber  to  its  enjoyment  of 
the  famous  Article  4  in  the  Separation  Law,  and  the 
country  to  its  ignorances  or  passions.  At  all  events  the 
crisis  came  like  a  thimderbolt.  On  the  last  day  of  March, 
1905,  the  Kaiser  unexpectedly  landed  at  Tangier,  and 


146         The  Deterioration  of  France 

delivered  a  speech  in  which  he  declared  that  the  Sultan 
of  Morocco  was  in  his  eyes  an  independent  sovereign, 
and  Morocco  a  country  open  to  all  nations  without  any 
monopoly  or  annexation.  "My  visit,"  the  monarch 
added,  "is  the  recognition  of  this  independence." 

The  weeks  that  followed  were  the  most  eventful 
in  the  history  of  the  Third  Republic.  The  Kaiser 
emphasized  the  meaning  of  the  Tangier  demonstration 
by  coming  to  Metz  for  the  inauguration  of  a  monument. 
A  French  mission,  consisting  of  exceptionally  distin- 
guished officers,  having  been  sent  to  Berlin  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  Kronprinz's  marriage,  the  welcome  which  was 
given  to  these  officers  showed  an  obvious  intention 
of  discriminating  between  them  and  their  mission. 
Threats  were  in  the  air. 

It  was  then  that  the  historical  dispatch  sent  by 
the  English  Foreign  Office  to  the  French  Government 
introduced  into  the  situation  a  new  element,  the  import- 
ance of  which  could  not  be  exaggerated.  "The  English 
Government,"  this  document  simply  said,  was  ready 
to  examine  "the  basis  of  an  agreement  likely  to  protect 
the  mutual  interests  of  England  and  France  in  case  they 
should  be  endangered." 

This  telegram,  through  some  mysterious  indis- 
cretion, was  known  at  Berlin  the  day  after  its  receipt, 
and  immediately  the  tone  of  the  German  papers  rose 
to  anger.  They  openly  said  that  France  must  be  the 
hostage  of  England;  let  any  threatening  move  on  the 
part  of  the  English  fleet  be  made  in  the  direction  of 
the  Baltic,  and  a  German  army  should  immediately 
be  sent  to  Nancy.  Some  people  have  said  that  M. 
Delcass6  was  for  mobilizing  at  once.  But  this  was  the 
impulse  of  a  man  who,  having  done  his  best,  had 
omitted  to  ascertain  whether  his  neighbours  were  also 


The  Blindness  of  Combism  147 

doing  their  duty.  A  war  in  the  then  condition  of 
France,  with  the  magazines  empty,  the  army  demoral- 
ized by  the  Dreyfusist  persecution,  and  the  country 
divided  and  taken  aback,  was  an  impossible  absurdity. 
M.  Delcasse  was  made  to  understand  it.  On  June  6, 
1905,  the  news  of  his  resignation  appeared  in  the  papers, 
and  it  was  soon  rumoured  that  the  removal  of  the 
man,  who  for  seven  years  had  been  the  representative 
of  France  before  Europe,  was  the  sacrifice  demanded 
by  Germany  in  a  tone  which  left  only  one  alternative. 

This,  then,  was  the  result  of  thirty-five  years  of 
a  regime  which  had  been  supposed  to  have  for  its 
constant  object  to  wash  away  the  memory  of  1870. 
An  "unprecedented  humiliation,"  as  M.  Clemenceau, 
then  Prime  Minister,  called  it  four  years  later  in  the 
Chamber — forced  upon  the  least  attentive  the  dete- 
rioration which  France,  slowly  at  first,  with  awful  rapid- 
ity since  1898,  had  undergone.  Under  pretence  of 
being  modern,  civilized,  and  philosophical,  the  leaders 
of  the  country  had  enervated  and  blinded  it;  under 
pretence  of  being  for  peace  they  had  made  it  incapable 
of  protecting  by  arms  the  record  of  its  historical  honour. 

Everybody  felt  that  this  degradation  ought  not  to  be 
charged  on  France.  In  the  minds  of  all  observers  here 
and  abroad  the  people  responsible  for  it  were  the  semi- 
anonymous  crew  to  which  I  have  just  referred  and  the 
history  of  which  has  almost  filled  this  book  so  far. 
They,  as  common  parlance  almost  invariably  designates 
them,  were  the  criminals.  And  they  were  not  so  much 
criminals  as  they  were  vulgarians  with  inferior  morals 
and  an  inferior  intelligence.  The  mistake  of  the  good 
men  who  pieced  together  the  Constitutional  laws  of 
1875  had  made  their  deplorable  rule  possible.  It  was 
inevitable  that  an  Assembly  of  unguided  democrats 


148         The  Deterioration  of  France 

should  think  of  its  own  shabby  interests,  and  that  such 
an  Assembly,  enjoying  a  practically  unbalanced  power, 
should  make  a  dangerous  use  of  it.  Being  individual- 
istic, that  is  to  say  selfish,  they  could  only  act  selfishly 
and  diffuse  selfishness  and  the  stupidity  of  selfishness 
about  them.  Let  them,  with  such  a  disposition, 
attempt  or  suffer  one  of  them  to  attempt  a  role  in  the 
intricate  politics  of  the  worid,  and  the  ridiculous  impos- 
sibility of  being  wise,  strong,  and  persevering  beyond  the 
frontiers  while  being  the  very  reverse  at  home  was  sure 
to  appear,  at  the  risk  of  tragic  consequences.  The 
lesson  of  the  history  of  the  Third  Republic  is  nothing 
else  than  the  trite  lesson  of  all  history,  viz.,  that  nothing 
matters  so  much  to  a  country  as  a  good  government. 


PART  II 
THE  RETURN  OF  THE  LIGHT 

SECTION     I. — IMMEDIATE     CONSEQUENCES     OF     THE 
TANGIER  INCIDENT 

SECTION     II. — INTELLECTUAL    PREPARATION    OF    THE 
NEW  SPIRIT 

SECTION  III. — EVIDENCES  OF  THE  NEW  SPIRIT 

(a)  Instinctive  Manifestations  of  the  New  Spirit 

(b)  More  Conscious  Manifestations  of  the  New  Spirit 


149 


INTRODUCTORY 

The  Tangier  affair  was  a  flash  of  lightning,  after  which 
the  clouds  lifted.  It  was  one  of  those  events  which 
rapidly  destroy  a  whole  system  of  thought,  or,  at  any 
rate,  throw  into  the  shade  the  protagonists  who  only  a 
short  time  before  seemed  alone  to  hold  the  field,  mean- 
while liberating  another  system  until  then  unnoticed 
or  disregarded.  What  has  been  called  the  regeneration 
or  even  the  resurrection  of  France  dated  from  that 
shock. 

The  admixture  of  materialism,  veiled  cowardice, 
and  self-delusion  which  had  caused  the  deterioration 
of  the  public  spirit,  and  emphasized  the  political  losses 
of  France,  suddenly  appeared  in  its  ugliness;  a  silence 
followed;  and  when  it  was  broken,  the  men  who  had 
been  the  oracles  of  the  people  for  two  generations  found 
they  had  lost  this  position ;  they  felt  that  all  they  could 
do  was  to  let  some  of  them  sneer  and  scoff,  but  they 
were  unable  to  prevent  better  men  than  themselves — 
the  elite  of  the  country,  in  fact — ^from  speaking  thoughts 
which  either  the  catastrophe  of  1870,  or  the  excesses  of 
thought,  speech,  and  misrule  since  then  committed 
had  planted  and  ripened  in  them. 

So  it  turned  out  that  while  the  fear  of  being  con- 
quered— ^rather  than  the  fear  of  going  to  war — caused 
in  the  less  reflective  portion  of  the  nation  the  reaction 
of  surprise,  anger,  and  gradually  determination  natural 

151 


152  The  Return  of  the  Light 

to  a  courageous  people,  the  thinkers  who  had  a  right  to 
the  intellectual  leadership  of  their  fellow-countrymen 
had  an  unexpected  opportunity  for  making  themselves 
heard.  And  when  they  did  speak,  or  when  popular 
exponents  began  to  retail  their  ideas,  these  were  found 
to  be  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  long-forgotten 
ancestral  wisdom.  One  may  say  without  any  fear  of 
contradiction  that  French  voices  had  not  sounded  so 
French  since  the  troubled  times  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Politicians  may  take  advantage  of  a  bad  constitution 
to  come  back  to  the  charge,  as  they  have  done  several 
times  already,  they  may  even  secure  power  and  use  it 
against  their  own  country,  but  nothing  can  undo 
what  was  done  after  Tangier  in  1905  and  again  after 
Agadir  in  191 1.  French  ideas  are  in  the  air,  at  present, 
instead  of  internationalist  doctrines,  and  the  name  of 
France,  which  the  governments  immediately  preceding 
the  Tangier  affair  were  ashamed  to  utter  in  the  accents 
of  patriotism,  is  now  constantly  on  the  lips  even  of  the 
Socialist  deputy  and  the  Syndicalist  workman.  This 
much  is  a  positive  gain;  the  reintegration  of  France  as 
a  directing  idea  of  the  French  nation  after  the  long 
intellectual  wandering  of  the  nineteenth  century  can- 
not be  a  transient  phenomenon. 

The  following  chapters  will  be  an  exposS  of  the 
fortunate  consequences  of  the  Tangier  incident,  and 
of  the  national  spirit  to  which  it  gave  birth,  both  among 
the  simple  and  among  those  more  capable  of  rational 
consciousness. 


SECTION  I 

IMMEDIATE  CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE  TANGIER 
INCIDENT 

I.     The  Lifting  of  the   Veil 

It  is  a  favourite  theory  that  the  French  generally 
act  in  what  Julius  Csesar  calls  the  tumultus  of  their 
ancestors,  the  Gauls.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  their  history 
is  more  one  of  upheavals  than  one  of  even  progress. 
Yet  it  is  also  a  fact  that  they  are  apt  to  play  a  long  time 
with  ideas  before  making  up  their  minds  about  them, 
and  that  when  politics  are  placed  between  ideas  and  in- 
tellectual vision  they  are  slower  than  many  other  peoples 
to  see  where  their  interest  immediately  lies.  This  may 
account  for  the  fact  that  although  the  Tangier  incident 
came  as  a  shock  and  its  illumination  was  sudden,  it  was 
not  accompanied  by  any  panic.  The  country,  it  must  be 
said,  had  very  different  interests  from  those  in  which  it 
has  been  absorbed  since ;  it  cared  little  for  the  Moroccan 
conquest,  about  which  neither  the  Foreign  Minister  nor 
the  press  would  enlighten  it;  and,  on  the  contrary,  it 
followed  the  debates  on  the  Separation  Law  with 
passionate  curiosity.  So  when  the  papers  narrated  the 
arrival  of  the  Kaiser's  ship  off  Tangier,  and  gave  the 
text  of  his  address  after  landing,  people  were  slow  to 
understand.     First  of  all,  it  had  been  settled  once  for 

153 


154  The  Return  of  the  Light 

all  during  the  preceding  years  that  the  world  was  now 
too  civilized  to  harbour  the  idea  of  a  war,  and  such  a 
comfortable  notion  is  one  which  survives  its  causes  as 
the  optimism  of  the  gambler,  and  even  the  hopeful 
sensation  he  had  before  being  undone,  survive  his  ruin. 
Then,  few  people  realized  that  Tangier  and  inaccessible 
Fez  and  the  rocky  valleys  of  Morocco  were  of  any 
interest  to  France,  so  that  the  significance  of  the 
Emperor^s  step  was  almost  lost  upon  them.  It  was 
only  when  the  papers  began  to  say  that  M.  Rouvier, 
the  Prime  Minister,  had  constant  conferences  with  the 
German  Ambassador,  and,  above  all,  when  M.  Delcasse 
vanished  from  the  Cabinet  at  a  few  hours*  notice,  that 
the  name  War  appeared  in  lurid  letters  upon  the 
horizon. 

Then  the  veil  was  indeed  lifted,  and  the  French 
had  a  clear  view  of  the  situation.  The  universal  feel- 
ing was  the  consciousness  of  an  immense  absurdity. 
Pacifism  had  been  a  ridiculous  farce.  Because  modern 
people,  too  nervous  to  think  of  blood,  had  chosen  to 
think  of  commerce  and  money  instead,  because  a  few 
dozen  Socialists  in  France  and  Germany  had  bragged 
that  no  fratricidal  duel  would  henceforward  be  suffered 
where  they  had  their  word  to  say;  because  M.  Leon 
Bourgeois  had  been  admired  at  a  Congress  of  the  Peace, 
and  M.  d'Estoumelles  de  Constant  meditated  writing 
a  crushing  letter  to  the  first  monarch  who  should  call  his 
people  to  the  flag,  war  had  been  regarded  as  an  impos- 
sibility. But  war  at  present  was  near  at  hand  all  the 
same.  It  mattered  little  that  France  had  not  wished  for 
it,  never  given  a  thought  to  it — there  it  was.  One  ship, 
half  pleasure-boat,  half  ironclad,  one  man  in  a  helmet 
not  only  meant  it,  but  also  meant  the  preposterousness 
of  planning  any  resistance.     Behind  the  yacht  there 


The  Lifting  of  the  Veil  155 

were  scores  of  men-of-war  built  in  a  few  years'  time, 
according  to  a  single  plan  carried  out  by  the  same 
men,  and  provided  with  every  modern  improvement; 
behind  the  Monarch  in  a  helmet  there  were  all  the 
German  nations,  with  their  unique  military  training, 
their  millions  of  men,  and  their  formidable  armament. 
How  childishly  foolish  the  anti-militarist  doctrines 
appeared!  what  a  lout  seemed  the  country  doctor. 
Combes,  with  his  belief  in  Jaures  and  the  peasantry 
craft  which  he  could  only  use  in  jockeying  combina- 
tions !  what  puppets  General  Andre  and  the  journalist 
Admiral  Pelletan  must  have  been!  If  the  French 
arsenals  were  empty,  if  the  French  officers  were  de- 
moralized by  espionage  and  petty  molestations ;  if  the 
army  had  been  persuaded  that  it  had  every  object 
except  war,  it  was  because  those  extraordinary  leaders 
had  been  taken  in  by  shallow  paradoxes  of  which  many 
a  plain  farmer  glancing  at  the  newspaper  had  seen  at 
once  the  futility. 

SyndicaHsm  had  long  been  a  bugbear,  and,  as  is  too 
often  the  case  with  frightening  objects,  it  had  been 
regarded  as  an  unavoidable  development.  Now,  in 
the  feeling  of  universal  disillusionment  which  gained 
the  workman  as  well  as  the  bourgeois,  it  became  merely 
irritating.  During  two  or  three  years,  as  we  shall  see, 
Syndicalism  was  to  prove  to  the  world  that  it  might 
checkmate  the  Chamber  itself,  but  even  this  would  not 
restore  its  formidable  magnetism.  It  would  only  be 
another  evidence  of  the  essential  weakness  of  the 
Chamber. 

As  to  the  religious  quarrels  over  which  so  much 
time  and  energy,  so  much  that  might  have  been  useful 
to  all  the  commonwealth,  had  been  wasted,  they 
appeared  in  their  true  light,  as  academic  disputes  which 


156  The  Return  of  the  Light 

the  stupid  hatred  of  the  anti-clericals  had  embittered 
to  the  point  of  making  one  of  the  parties  forget  every 
idea  of  justice. 

On  the  whole,  a  few  months  after  the  Tangier  affair 
there  were  not  many  Frenchmen  whose  outlook  had  not 
been  deeply  modified.  To  most  of  them  it  had  been 
brought  home  that  every  individual,  whether  he  likes  it 
or  not,  is  tied  by  vital  bonds,  not  to  abstractions,  but  to 
a  territory,  and  that  indifference  to  the  fortimes  of  this 
territory  is  unnatural  and  foolish,  and  must  sooner  or 
later  be  paid  for  by  humiliation  or  anxiety. 

2.    Awakening  of  the  Instinct  of  Self -Preservation 

The  success  of  the  Republicans  in  the  decisive  elec- 
tion of  1876  had  for  its  principal  cause  a  vague  but 
universal  feeHng  which  acted  powerfully  upon  the 
electorate.  This  was  the  hope  that  the  new  regime 
might  make  of  the  welfare  of  the  community  the  con- 
cern of  all  the  citizens.  The  wish  to  be  an  active  ele- 
ment in  society,  to  be  more  than  a  mere  looker-on,  not 
to  seem  to  presume  by  taking  a  positive  interest  in  the 
affairs  of  one's  country,  and  to  help  in  promoting  their 
proper  settlement  is  the  pathetic  side  of  the  demo- 
cracies; it  is  also  their  chief  motive  power. 

The  failure  of  the  Third  Republic  to  do  more  than 
artificially  keep  up  this  feeling  must  be  one  of  the  chief 
grievances  of  the  social  historian  against  it.  This 
bourgeois  democracy  will  always  be  regarded  as  a  fraud. 
From  the  very  first — ^that  is  to  say,  from  the  moment 
the  constitution  of  1875  gave  them  an  easy  means  of 
exploiting  their  compatriots,  these  unscrupulous  people 
duped  them.  They  went  on  repeating  to  them  at  each 
election  that  they  were  the  real  masters  of  their  de- 


Instinct  of  Self-Preservation  157 

stinies,  but  taking  every  precaution  lest  the  so-called 
masters  should  have  a  single  clear  issue  placed  before 
them  on  which  they  could  pronounce.  The  effect  of  this 
policy  was  certain.  The  electors,  interested  at  first, 
became  gradually  indifferent  to  politics  which  they  not 
only  did  not  sway,  but  hardly  ever  understood,  and 
settled  into  the  apathy  which  has  been  the  character- 
istic of  the  Third  Republic.  So  that  the  only  people 
who  were  attentive  to  the  public  affairs  were  for  years 
the  very  wide-awake  politicians  in  the  Chamber  from 
selfish  motives,  and  later  on  that  section  of  the  working- 
classes  which  came  to  consciousness  through  Syndicalist 
propagandism.  In  the  main,  the  chief  object  the  nation 
had  had  in  welcoming  the  Republic  thus  appeared 
nullified. 

What  the  development  of  the  Republican  institutions 
had  not  done,  the  Tangier  incident  did  in  a  few  weeks. 
Once  more  the  French  recovered  that  freshness  of 
citizenship,  that  unanimity  of  feeling  and  purpose  which 
have  impelled  them  to  action  at  all  the  great  moments 
of  their  history:  the  Communist  movement,  the  Cru- 
sades, the  Revolution,  the  great  wars  of  1792,  and  the 
first  wars  of  the  Empire. 

The  threats  of  Germany  might  indeed  have  been 
traced  to  causes  which  ought  to  leave  the  lower  classes 
indifferent :  the  dissatisfaction  of  a  few  bankers  or  ship- 
owners, the  Imperialist  ambitions  of  some  university 
professors,  the  jingoism  of  the  Prussian  officers,  etc.; 
but  these  considerations,  if  they  were  put  forward, 
could  not  outweigh  the  natural  impulse  of  patriotism  in 
its  most  elemental  form,  self-preservation.  From  high 
to  low  the  French  felt  that  they  were  threatened  with  a 
foreign  domination,  and  the  most  unbearable  foreign 
domination  they  could  imagine ;  it  was  enough  to  revive 


158  The  Return  of  the  Light 

in  them  the  passionate  interest  in  their  State  which 
used  to  possess  their  ancestors,  and  to  give  them 
the  ennobHng  consciousness  of  participating  in  its  de- 
fence, if  not  in  its  government.  In  truth,  it  is  on  the 
memory  of  those  moments  that  France  has  lived  ever 
since,  and  her  fountain  of  new  energy  rose  when  she 
reaHzed  the  significance  of  the  Kaiser's  demonstration 
in  Morocco. 

After  Tangier  the  feeling  gave  birth  to  a  feverish 
desire  for  being  ready  soon,  whatever  the  cost  might  be ; 
after  Agadir — that  is  to  say,  six  years  later — circum- 
stances having  changed,  the  army  being  in  perfect 
training,  the  arsenals  full,  and  the  French  artillery 
showing  a  decided  superiority  over  that  of  Germany, 
the  reaction  was  even  more  resolute.  For  the  first 
time  since  the  brilliant  and  imprudent  days  of  the 
Second  Empire,  the  whole  French  nation  waited  im- 
patiently for  a  declaration  of  war.  The  suspense  lasted 
only  a  fortnight,  but  it  had  been  the  suspense  of  courage 
and  wounded  pride,  and  no  longer  that  of  nervous 
incertitude,  and  after  that  fortnight  the  French  were 
not  the  same.  Not  only  the  vague  formulae  clothing 
vaguer  hopes  with  which  they  had  been  amused  so  long 
were  forgotten,  but  the  ghost  of  1870 — that  slowly- 
growing  fear  of  Germany  which  materialism  in  the  guise 
of  Pacifism  had  increased — ^had  been  laid  at  last.  I 
know  that  a  sentimental  impetus  is  only  too  quickly 
spent,  and  I  have  seen  people  imagine  that  this  one 
would  be  like  every  other.  But  the  events  have  shown 
that  there  must  have  been  in  the  Tangier  and  Agadir 
commotions  something  that  was  of  another,  higher, 
and  more  endurable  order.  The  French  may  be  as 
indifferent  to  mere  politics  as  they  we're  beforehand, 
but  their  attitude  the  moment  a  truly  patriotic  interest 


Revival  of  the  Military  Spirit         159 

is  at  stake  proves  that  they  have  regained  their  fuhiess 
of  civic  consciousness  on  a  few  vital  points.  The  way 
in  which  the  immense  majority  of  the  nation  welcomed 
the  Three  Year  Law  and  the  financial  measures  attend- 
ing it  had  the  calmness  accompanying  a  rational 
operation,  and  not  the  excitement  inherent  in  purely 
instinctive  impulses. 

3.    Revival    of   the    Military   Spirit 

It  is  almost  a  tautology  to  say  that  the  feeling  of  self- 
preservation  promptly  gave  rise  to  a  revival  of  the 
military  spirit.  All  the  effort  of  the  French  since  1905 
has  had  the  army  for  its  object.  And  the  common  good 
sense  of  the  people  did  not  beat  about  the  bush  for  the 
means  of  defending  France  at  a  minimum  of  sacrifice; 
it  went  straight  to  the  only  practical  method.  Those 
were  the  days  when  Jaures,  in  endless  speeches  and 
writings,  would  explain  that  the  best  army  was  not  an 
army  at  all,  but  the  whole  nation  in  arms  on  any  men- 
ace against  its  independence.  So-called  serious  people, 
inured  to  absurdities  by  the  ocean  of  paradoxes  on 
which  France  had  drifted  since  1899,  lent  the  new  gen- 
eral an  attentive  ear,  but  they  gazed  in  severe  doubtful- 
ness at  the  real  soldiers  who  took  the  trouble  to  explain 
that  all  these  fine  theories  were  not  theories  at  all, 
but  dreams  which  might  look  well  only  in  Michelet's 
or  Victor  Hugo's  pages ;  soldiers  were  under  a  ban  and 
supposed  to  know  less  than  anybody  else  about  every- 
thing, including  tactics. 

The  bulk  of  the  nation  were  not  long  in  scouting  this 
moonshine.  An  army  was  a  military  concern,  and 
civilians  knew  nothing  about  it;  the  more  military  it 
was,  the  better.     The  eastern  frontier  ought  to  be  pro- 


i6o  The  Return  of  the  Light 

tected  at  all  times  by  a  thick  line  of  regiments  ready  to 
march,  and  the  defence  of  that  most  important  approach 
was  not,  on  any  account,  to  depend  on  the  uncertain 
arrival  of  reserves.  Garrison  towns  like  Toul,  Lune- 
ville,  Verdun,  and  the  lonely  forts  in  their  vicinity, — • 
places  the  very  names  of  which  used  to  sound  disagree- 
ably in  the  ears  of  the  recruits, — became  in  great  de- 
mand.' The  yearly  manoeuvres,  which  reservists  had 
formerly  been  glad  to  shirk,  were  accepted  as  treats. 
The  officers  who  commanded  those  of  1905  are  unani- 
mous in  their  statements  that  the  men  were  as  different 
from  themselves  as  if  twenty  years  had  intervened; 
the  proportion  of  reservists  on  the  sick  list  was  wonder- 
fully small.  The  technical  conclusions  of  the  Manchu- 
rian  war  had  just  begun  to  be  widely  circulated,  and  it 
seemed  as  if  the  soldiers  were  as  ready  to  understand 
them  as  their  officers;  they  could  be  summed  up  in  the 
superiority  of  offensive  over  defensive  tactics,  and  in 
the  necessity  of  giving  the  men  habits  of  decision  and 
initiative.  Nothing,  of  course,  would  be  better  in 
keeping  with  the  military  tradition  of  the  French, 
and  the  principles  at  which  officers  arrived  were  acted 
upon  immediately.  Many  observers  must  have  been 
surprised  at  noticing  the  change  in  the  men*s  impres- 
sions concerning  their  officers.  They  used  to  be  con- 
fined to  trivial  or  merely  funny  remarks  about  their 
personal  disposition  and  its  effects  upon  daily  barrack 
life.  Now  the  soldiers  would  discuss  their  chiefs 
entirely  from  the  professional  point  of  view,  and  in 
most  cases  their  appreciations  applied  wonderfully  to 

*  The  present  writer  knew  personally  a  lad  of  twenty,  a  poor  college 
servant,  who  insisted  on  undergoing  an  operation,  lest  he  should  not 
serve  his  time,  and  applied  for  one  of  the  Lorraine  garrison  towns  instead 
of  staying  in  or  near  Paris,  as  he  could  easily  have  done. 


Revival  of  the  Military  Spirit         i6i 

the  military — not  parade-ground — value  of  the  officers. 
Once  more  the  army  was  what  it  purports  to  be  on  the 
first  line  of  the  booklet  known  as  the  Theorie  Militairey 
viz.,  a  school  for  war,  and  not,  as  the  Dreyfusists  would 
have  had  it,  for  peace. 

It  is  remarkable,  also,  that  the  development  of  avia- 
tion, which  almost  coincided  with  this  change,  was 
never  regarded  from  the  scientific  or  sportsman's  point 
of  view,  but  was  viewed  through  its  military  possibili- 
ties. The  naive  statements  of  Vedrines — possibly  the 
best  representative  of  his  craft — which  caused  so  much 
sympathetic  amusement  in  England,  corresponded  to 
a  universal  feeling. 

Meanwhile  the  success  of  General  d'Amade  and 
General  Lyautey  in  Morocco  effaced  what  traces  of 
ill-will  against  staff  officers  might  have  been  left  after 
the  Dreyfus  affair.  Both  were  typical  French  soldiers: 
brave,  dashing,  and  brilliant,  persevering,  flexible,  and 
good-htimoured,  but,  above  all,  intelligent,  making  the 
most  of  every  opportunity — in  their  own  interest,  no 
doubt,  for  they  are  ambitious,  but,  above  all,  for  the 
success  of  their  mission.  These  are  qualities  which  will 
always  win  popularity  in  France.  It  was  in  vain  that 
Jaures  and  his  party  cried  out  against  the  folly  of 
colonial  enterprises,  and  proved  with  long  columns  of 
figures  that  the  Moroccan  campaign  cost  enormous 
sums  of  money  which  might  have  been  better  employed 
elsewhere;  the  country,  as  a  rule  so  sensitive  to  argu- 
ments of  this  kind,  hardly  listened.  The  general  feeling, 
which  went  on  gathering  strength  as  the  years  passed, 
was  evidently  that  France  is  rich  enough  to  pay  for  her 
glory. 

Gradually  the  army,  which  had  almost  been  com- 
pelled to  hide  itself,   and  seemed  to  be  merely  on 


i62  The  Return  of  the  Light 

sufferance  in  a  country  which  had  outrun  every  other 
in  anti-miUtarist  so-called  civilization,  was  pushed 
again  to  the  forefront,  and  when  one  of  its  most  popular 
manifestations,  the  ** retreat,"  or  Saturday  night  pa- 
trolling with  the  bands,  was  revived,  it  was  nothing 
short  of  a  triumph. 

But  nothing  can  give  a  better  idea  of  the  return  of 
France  to  her  traditional  military  spirit  than  the 
changed  tone  of  the  politicians  when  they  speak  of  the 
army.  General  Andre,  during  the  long  four  years  in 
which  he  was  Minister  of  War,  would  warm  over  the 
"nation  in  arms,"  but  he  always  spoke  of  officers  in  a 
tone  unpleasantly  near  the  apologetical.  It  was  obvious 
that  he  thought  them  benighted,  and  felt  more  in- 
clined to  criticize  than  to  defend  them.  His  immediate 
successor,  M.  Berteau^c,  a  broker,  a  busybody,  and  a 
politician  with  some  of  the  politician's  worst  faults,  but 
with  keen  receptivities  and  a  conceit  which  occasionally 
would  look  like  proper  pride,  felt  the  change  in  the 
country.  The  present  writer  can  remember  him  in  the 
Chamber,  shortly  after  the  Tangier  affair,  standing  in 
his  bench  and  threatening  with  violent  gestures  his 
own  political  friends  who  had  made  insulting  allusions 
to  the  army.  M.  Messimy,  advanced  as  he  was,  and 
with  the  initial  disadvantage  of  having  left  the  army  for 
politics,  appeared  much  more  military  in  office  than 
might  have  been  expected.  As  to  M.  Millerand,  his 
character  being  equal  to  his  intelligence,  he  not  only 
freed  the  army  from  the  wretched  trammels  which 
Dreyfusism  had  put  upon  it,  but  treated  it  with  a 
respect  which  could  not  but  be  contagious.  The  politi- 
cians who  resented  it  were,  however,  compelled  to  copy 
such  respect,  and  to-day  even  the  worst  ungentlemanli- 
ness  in  the  Chamber  seems  decidedly  cured  of  the  tone 


The  Chamber  Dethroned  163 

it  complacently  affected  about  1903.  The  division 
between  France  and  the  French  army  is  a  thing  of  the 
past. 

4.     The  Chamber  Dethroned 

During  the  whole  of  its  history  the  French  Chamber 
was  popular  only  once;  that  was  after  May  16,  1877, 
when  three  hundred  and  sixty-three  deputies  rose 
against  President  MacMahon  and,  right  or  wrong,  em- 
bodied for  a  while  the  feeling  of  the  majority  in  the 
nation.  The  Chamber  had  been  in  existence  only  a  year 
then  and  was  as  full  of  promises  as  the  Republican 
regime  itself.  After  that  date,  it  never  once  succeeded 
again  in  securing  the  national  sympathy,  and  more 
than  once  it  drew  the  national  contempt  on  its  head. 

However,  the  sentiment  into  which  the  country 
gradually  settled  after  a  long  and  disappointing  ex- 
perience of  Parliamentary  government  was  chiefly  one 
of  profound  indifference.  The  deputies  were  the  rulers 
of  the  country;  that  was  a  matter  of  course;  how  they 
ruled  it  did  not  concern  one  Frenchman  in  twenty. 

After  1905,  not  only  the  Tangier  affair,  but  a  series 
of  occurrences  modified  that  feeling.  For  thirty  years 
the  Chamber  had  treated  the  short-lived  Cabinets  which 
it  made  and  unmade  as  if  fully  conscious  of  their 
inferiority.  On  no  occasion  had  it  been  compelled  to 
appeal  to  anybody,  or  even  trust  anybody.  The 
Tangier  incident  made  the  deputies  feel,  and,  for  the 
first  time  really  appear,  not  only  defeated  but  bewil- 
dered. They  tried,  indeed,  to  lay  the  blame  of  their 
shame  on  M.  Delcasse,  but  the  Cabinet  in  which  M. 
Delcasse  had  served  had  been  too  submissively  their 
obedient  agent,  and  no  one  would  believe  that  men  so 


164  The  Return  of  the  Light 

haughty  the  day  before  were  not  responsible  for  their 
actions.  Meanwhile  the  attention  of  the  whole  country 
and  of  Europe  itself  became  centred  on  one  man,  M. 
Rouvier,  and  as  the  negotiations  between  France  and 
Germany  were  carried  on  for  the  first  time  not  only  at 
the  Foreign  Office  or  at  the  German  Embassy,  but 
through  semi-official  statements  in  the  Press  of  both 
countries,  the  Chamber  suddenly  receded  into  the 
background  and  assumed  the  humble  part  of  the 
looker-on.  It  was  a  great  falling  off,  and,  strange  to 
say,  nobody  seemed  to  notice  it  otherwise  than  with 
satisfaction. 

In  the  years  which  followed,  the  Chamber  had  the 
ill-luck  to  be  seen  repeatedly  in  the  same  predicament. 
It  did  not  even  attempt  to  deal  with  the  vine-growers' 
disturbances  in  the  south  of  France,  and  once  more  the 
country  saw  its  interests  placed  in  the  hands  of  one 
individual,  who  this  time  was  the  wily  Clemenceau.  It 
was  as  passive  when  a  new  power,  another  Parliament, 
with  chiefs  and  a  discipline,  the  Syndicalist  Labour 
Bourse,  suddenly  rose  against  it  and  fairly  had  it  at  bay 
on  two  occasions.  Nobody  who  lived  in  Paris  at  the 
time  will  ever  forget  the  electricians'  and  above  all  the 
postmen's  strikes.  There  was  considerable  discomfort 
in  the  city,  and  after  a  time  there  was  a  certain  amount 
of  impatience  which  never  bore  the  semblance  of  a 
panic;  but  through  it  all  there  was  a  sly  enjoyment  of 
the  embarrassment  in  which  the  deputies  found  them- 
selves, and  whoever  met  some  of  them  at  the  time  must 
have  seen  that  they  realized  it  with  some  confusion. 
This  was  emphasized  during  the  postmen's  strike  by  the 
treatment  which  M.  Buisson  and  a  few  other  Radical- 
Socialist  deputies  received  at  a  meeting  of  the  strikers. 
They  were  hooted  off  the  platform  where  they  had  taken 


The  Chamber  Dethroned  165 

their  seats  uninvited,  and  that  was  the  first  open 
manifestation  of  the  breach  between  the  bourgeois 
Socialism  and  earnest  Syndicalism.  The  strike  of  the 
Northern  Railway-men  gave  rise  to  a  similar  situation, 
the  Chamber  appearing  helpless  and  hardly  attempting 
to  disguise  its  annoyance  under  pointless  speeches, 
while  M.  Briand,  then  Minister  of  the  Interior,  was 
practically  left  to  adjust  the  difficulty  alone. 

Such  experiences  cannot  be  repeated  at  short  inter- 
vals without  effect.  The  gradual  displacing  of  the 
basis  of  authority  from  the  Chamber  to  the  Prime 
Ministers,  which  I  will  point  out  in  the  next  chapter, 
dates  from  those  days. 

But  with  effacement  came  an  increased  contempt 
when  the  deputies,  apparently  satisfied  to  have  taken 
a  back  seat,  made  up  for  the  humiliation  by  tangible 
advantages  they  craftily  secured  for  themselves.  They 
certainly  obeyed  unwise  suggestions  when  they — un- 
known to  the  country  and  on  one  occasion  profiting  by 
the  absence  of  most  of  the  minority — voted  for  them- 
selves, first  a  handsome  old-age  pension,  and  later  on 
an  increase  of  two  thirds  of  their  salary.  The  nick- 
name Quinze  Mille — their  salary  now  being,  in  fact, 
fifteen  thousand  francs — sticks  much  more  unpleasantly 
upon  them  than  even  the  memory  of  the  Panama 
corruption.  The  elector  never  became  reconciled  to  the 
notion  that  while  his  own  taxes  rose  the  salary  of  his 
deputies  should  rise  too.  Even  a  reform  like  Propor- 
tional Representation,  which  at  other  times  would  have 
appeared  eminently  moral,  did  not  succeed  in  im- 
pressing people  with  the  disinterestedness  of  the  Cham- 
ber. The  only  conclusion  which  the  country  thought 
safe  was  that  deputies  could  not  very  well  resist  an 
impulse  stronger  than  their  own. 


i66  The  Return  of  the  Light 

5.     The  Craving  for  Strong  Men 

After  the  General  Election  of  May,  1914,  M.  Jaur^s 
declared  triumphantly  that  France  had  shown  once 
more  her  antipathy  for  personal  power.  He  added  that 
if  the  logic  of  the  election  were  pressed  to  its  conse- 
quences, as  it  ought  to  be,  the  Presidency  of  the  Re- 
public should  be  abolished.  The  Socialist  leader  was 
partly  right,  undoubtedly.  If  the  logic,  not  of  an 
election,  but  of  the  interpretation  by  successive  Parlia- 
ments of  the  Constitution  were  pressed  to  its  conse- 
quences, the  Presidency  would  appear  an  expensive  and 
confusing  superfluity.  The  present  volume  is  nothing 
else  than  the  recognition  of  this  fact.  But  while  M. 
Jaures  objected  to  any  initiative  on  the  part  of  the 
President,  I  deplore  the  fact  that  the  person  who  so  far 
appeared  the  most  in  harmony  with  the  so-called  Con- 
stitution was  M.  Fallieres — that  is  to  say,  the  President 
— whose  lack  of  individuality  and  pitiful  self-efface- 
ment were  the  nearest  approach  we  could  conceive 
to  nonentity. 

But,  as  I  said  above,  M.  Jaures  was  only  partly  right. 
Logic  was  not  that  gentleman's  forte,  although  he  was 
a  Utopian,  and  Utopians  frequently  make  as  much  of 
logic  as  the  devil  does  in  Dante.  The  logic  of  a  poor 
election  is — no  more  than  the  logic  of  a  poor  constitu- 
tion— the  logic  of  facts.  M.  Poincare,  having  been 
elected  against  the  wish  of  M.  Jaures  and  his  friends, 
it  was  natural  that  if  the  electorate  seemed  to  favour 
the  latter  they  should  cry  out  that  the  country  abode 
by  them  against  the  President.  But  I  have  pointed 
out  several  times  already,  that  French  elections,  having 
never  once  since  1877  offered  the  voters  any  definite 
issue  can  never  claim  to  be  clear  answers  of  the  elector- 


The  Craving  for  Strong  Men         167 

ate  as  they  are  in  England.  The  only  inference  that 
could  be  drawn  from  the  election  of  191 4  was,  that  in 
the  present  electioneering  system,  Radical  prefects, 
guided  by  a  Radical  Cabinet,  as  that  of  M.  Doumergue, 
were  sure  to  return  a  Radical  majority.  But  this  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  state  of  public  opinion  concern- 
ing the  superiority  of  some  responsible  person  over 
an  irresponsible  Assembly. 

The  indisputable  fact  is  that  since  the  Tangier 
affair  France  has  constantly  been  in  search  of  a  man 
— to  such  an  extent,  that  successive  disappointments 
have  only  made  her  longing  more  acute.  Let  me  leave 
out  the  traditional  love  of  the  soldier  which  waits  only 
for  a  chance  of  manifesting  itself,  and  limit  myself  to  a 
rapid  review  of  the  politicians  she  has  magnified  into 
statesmen  or  chiefs,  merely  because  they  were  not 
afraid  to  take  their  responsibilities. 

At  the  moment  of  the  Tangier  affair,  it  was  M. 
Rouvier,  a  man  with  a  past,  a  disreputable  past,  but 
a  self-made,  energetic  man,  whom  the  ups  and  downs 
of  existence  had  steeled  against  surprises,  and  who 
rather  enjoyed  a  fight.  I  have  said  above  how 
he  monopolized  an  attention  which  nobody  since 
Gambetta  had  ever  commanded. 

At  the  time  of  the  Agadir  difficulty  the  head  of  gov- 
ernment was  M.  Clemenceau.  This  remarkable  in- 
dividual is  not  easy  to  analyse.  His  purely  literary 
works,  which  his  political  fame  throws  into  the  shade, 
reveal  a  very  different  personality  from  that  to  which 
the  newspapers  have  accustomed  us,'  and,  were  it  not 
for  a  pitiably  narrow  philosophical  outlook,  they  would 
make  the  author  decidedly  sympathetic.    But  this  side 

*  I  have  endeavoured  to  disengage  their  characteristics  in  an  article 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century  and  After,  May,  1907. 


1 68  The  Return  of  the  Light 

of  M.  Clemenceau  is  almost  unknown.  That  which  has 
made  him  famous  is  a  bitter  irony  which  has  many- 
times  disported  itself  in  actions  even  more  than  in 
words,  and  a  capacity  for  political  hatreds  which  talent 
and  an  off-hand  manner  of  distributing  contempt  alone 
save  from  being  repellent.  Altogether  M.  Clemenceau 
had,  during  most  of  his  existence,  produced  on  his  com- 
patriots the  effect  which  the  presence  of  Gambetta 
at  the  head  of  affairs  would,  according  to  Bismarck, 
produce  in  Europe;  he  was  a  drummer  in  a  sick  man^s 
room.  But  he  had  the  good  fortune  during  his  tenure 
of  office  to  be  able  to  resist  Germany  instead  of  ne- 
gotiating, with  her,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  his 
pride  was  indistinguishable  from  dignity.  Then  this 
man  who  appeared  to  be  the  lineal  descendant  of  the 
great  Jacobins,  and  obviously  cultivated  the  resem- 
blance, was  on  several  occasions  placed  face  to  face 
with  the  Revolution,  and  every  time  crushed  it  in 
perfect  disregard  of  its  great  name  and  perfect  con- 
sciousness of  the  littleness  of  its  supporters;  finally,  he 
who  as  a  mere  deputy  had  made  himself  the  judge  of  so 
many  Cabinets,  treated  the  deputies  and  senators  as  if 
they  were  rather  unintelligent  boys  with  more  rights 
to  the  birch  than  to  information.  One  of  his  com- 
munications to  the  Chamber  on  the  subject  of  the 
Entente  Cordiale  will  remain  famous  by  its  reticence 
and  almost  insulting  brevity.  On  the  whole,  M.  Clem- 
enceau, who  had  never  acknowledged  any  authority, 
showed  himself  the  most  authoritative  of  Prime  Minis- 
ters, and,  in  spite  of  all  that  in  his  already  long  life  had 
been  known  against  him,  the  country  loved  him  for  it. 
Three  men  came  after  him:  M.  Briand,  M.  Poincare, 
now  President  of  the  Republic,  and  M.  Barthou.  The 
three  had  real  if  unequal  rights  to  the  name  which  M. 


The  Craving  for  Strong  Men         169 

Barr^  gave  to  the  chief  leaders  of  the  RepubHcan 
parties;  they  were  'Hhe  sons  of  the  wolf."  M.  Briand 
had  been  not  only  a  Socialist,  but  an  anarchist,  and  it 
seemed  unpleasantly  probable  that  his  conversion  to 
order  had  been  more  sincere  than  his  interest  in  strikes. 
M.  Poincare  had  a  clean  past,  but  he  had  been  too  long 
in  politics  not  to  have  gathered  some  of  the  political 
dust  upon  him,  and  his  somewhat  narrow  anti-clerical- 
ism could  not  be  associated  with  greatness.  As  to  M. 
Barthou,  a  shrewd  Southerner  with  elegant  ambitions, 
he  was  celebrated  for  a  recantation  which  he  had  made 
when  a  member  of  the  Meline  Cabinet,  and  which  was 
not  easily  distinguishable  from  a  political  treason. 
Yet,  one  after  the  other,  these  three  men  were  looked 
upon  as  rescuers,  and  it  might  take  them  years  of 
passivity  to  exhaust  the  reserve  of  hope  which  the 
nation  once  placed  upon  them.  Why  should  this  be? 
Merely  because  at  various  periods  of  their  governments 
they  had  to  speak  up,  show  the  strong  hand,  and  on 
the  whole  make  the  enemies  of  order  realize  that  they 
felt  the  country  on  their  side  against  anarchy,  and 
would  act  in   consequence. 

If  you  will  contrast  this  impression  with  that  which 
spread  not  only  through  the  country  but  through 
Europe — ^with  the  sole  exception  of  Germany — when 
the  Doumergue  Cabinet  went  into  office,  and  it  seemed 
once  more  as  if  there  were  no  man  at  the  wheel  in 
France,  with  a  foolish  and  riotous  crew  instead,  you 
will  have  no  doubt  that  France  has  a  passionate  longing 
for  strong  men.  If  M.  Jaures,  who  denied  it,  had  been 
more  capable  of  criticism,  he  would  have  been  sur- 
prised at  his  own  lack  of  popularity,  in  spite  of  qualities 
which  ought  to  have  been  essentially  popular  in  France. 
Mere  talent  is  at  present  played  out,  and  character  has 


170  The  Return  of  the  Light 

taken  its  place;  men  like  Marshal  MacMahon,  or  the 
Due  de  Broglie,  who  only  secured  esteem  in  the  early- 
years  of  the  Republic,  would  be  to-day  enthusiastically 
followed;  the  Tangier  affair,  by  disclosing  the  danger  of 
weakness,  recreated  the  respect  for  energy. 

6.     Transformation  of  Newspapers 

The  difference  between  French  and  English  news- 
papers before  the  Tangier  incident  must  strike  the 
least  attentive.  The  English  have  been  placed  by  their 
situation  in  the  world  in  the  necessity  to  be  attentive 
to  what  is  going  on  in  the  whole  world.  And  their 
patriotism  is  so  wide  awake,  so  much  on  its  guard 
against  untested  theories  and  uncontrolled  information, 
that  it  goes  by  facts  and  is  mostly  occupied  with  facts. 
This  accuracy,  coupled  with  the  businesslike  manner 
the  English  have  almost  universally  in  discussing  the 
interests  of  their  country,  produces  the  wonderfully 
illuminating  articles  we  can  read  in  the  great  London 
dailies.  English  people  are  so  absorbed  in  the  matter 
of  those  compositions  that  they  hardly  ever  notice 
their  Demosthenic  terseness  and  unconscious  literary 
perfection. 

The  French,  in  their  taste  for  conversation,  contro- 
versy, eloquence,  and  repartee,  are  the  real  descendants 
of  the  Gauls,  and  this  tendency  is  so  strong  that  it 
causes  them  too  often  to  be  indifferent  to  the  subject 
on  hand,  and  to  take  their  chief  pleasure  in  the  handling 
of  it.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  at  least  since 
the  days  of  Louis  XV — when  the  French  Colonial 
expansion  practically  stopped  and  the  Revolutionary 
ideas  engrossed  every  intellect — foreign  topics  should 
not  have  been  frequent  in  their  talk  and,  above  all, 


Transformation  of  Newspapers        171 

in  their  Press;  those  objects  are  too  remote  and  often 
too  dry  to  be  made  impassioning. 

During  the  years  which  immediately  preceded  the 
danger  of  France,  speculation,  as  I  said  before,  ran 
riot,  and  the  newspapers  were  full  of  it.  No  editor 
would  have  dreamed  of  trying  to  interest  his  readers  in 
Tunis  or  the  Congo  when  the  whole  country  was  mak- 
ing its  mind  up  about  the  advisability  of  continuing  or 
discontinuing  the  Church.  The  Temps  newspaper 
would  indeed  go  on  devoting  its  first  column  to  dis- 
cussions of  foreign  questions  which,  as  a  rule,  were  a 
faint  reflection  of  the  same  in  the  London  Times,  but 
either  this  was  skipped  or  it  was  that  which  gave  the 
paper  its  exaggerated  renown  for  dullness.  In  most  of 
the  other  dailies,  foreign  news  had  to  be  hunted  in  the 
invisible  corner  where  it  had  replaced  the  abstract  of 
the  Parliamentary  proceedings  under  the  Second 
Empire. 

In  a  few  weeks  after  the  Tangier  affair,  this  feature 
of  the  French  Press  vanished.  The  semi-diplomatic 
conversations  carried  on  in  the  Temps  and  the  leading 
German  papers,  lent  a  dignity  so  far  unhoped-for  to  the 
daily  Press.  A  whole  school  of  young  journalists,  with 
special  training,  abilities,  and  ambitions,  were  de- 
lighted to  have  a  chance  of  playing  a  real  part  in  the 
affairs  of  Europe,  and  while  in  company  they  would 
astonish  by  their  reticence,  they  gradually  filled  the 
periodicals  with  their  knowledge.  To-day  it  is  im- 
possible to  open  even  a  provincial  French  paper  without 
seeing  a  comparatively  large  space  of  it  devoted  to 
foreign  news,  and  leading  articles  frequently  discuss  it. 
At  first,  indeed,  it  was  only  a  fad  or  a  pose  to  pretend 
information  or  interest  in  international  questions,  but, 
while  the  aristocratic  readers  of  the  Gaulois  may  be 


172  The  Return  of  the  Light 

negligible  in  this  connection,  the  readers  of  the  Petit 
Journal  are  not,  and  whoever  travels  in  the  country 
must  have  noticed  frequently  how  intelligently  plain 
persons  retail  their  paper  on  these  questions. 

The  importance  of  this  change  cannot  be  exaggerated. 
I  shall  point  out  in  another  chapter  how  the  substitution 
of  the  European  for  the  mere  party  point  of  view  in  the 
politics  of  France  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  improvement 
in  the  national  spirit. 

7.    Rapid  Diffusion  of  a  New  Mentality 

France,  before  the  Tangier  shock  recalled  her  to 
herself,  was  in  a  state  of  complete  anarchy.  Im- 
mediately after,  the  reaction  produced  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  danger  brought  about  a  beginning  of 
order,  and  even  something  like  a  healthy — if  elemental 
— political  creed.  The  instinct  of  self-preservation,  the 
love  and  respect  of  the  army,  the  craving  for  a  man,  which 
I  have  pointed  out  as  aspects  of  that  reaction  may  be 
purely  spontaneous  in  appearance,  but  they  cannot 
exist  without  principles  making  for  authority  and  dis- 
cipline, and  bound  ultimately  to  develop  into  a  positive 
political  system.  In  fact,  the  attitude  which  I  shall 
describe  farther  down,  as  the  consequence  of  the  new 
spirit  of  France,  is  little  else  than  this  development. 

But  the  French  are  seldom  content  with  living  their 
ideas;  they  must  think  and  speak  them,  and  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  since  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  habit  has  constantly  gathered  strength. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  as  the  Tangier  affair 
threw  its  light  over  mere  political  deficiencies,  it  should 
also  have  shown  their  connection  with  dangerous 
formulae.     As  the  Dreyfusist  nubes  were  dispelled,  a 


Diffusion  of  a  New  Mentality        173 

desire  for  a  saner  and  higher  philosophy  than  that 
which  was  responsible  for  the  nation's  blindness  and 
feebleness  was  universally  felt,  and  it  did  not  wait  very 
long  for  its  satisfaction.  The  following  chapters  will 
show  that  while  materialism  under  all  its  forms — 
philosophical,  social,  and  literary — had  been  gradually 
filtering  from  its  earliest  exponents  to  the  lower  strata 
in  French  society,  some  of  these  exponents  themselves 
had  reconsidered  their  ideas,  and  a  numerous  elitCy 
soberer  and  better-informed  than  the  Dreyfusist  ''in- 
tellectuals," had  heard  of  their  recantation.  This  was 
not  all.  While  the  slow-going  masses  were  left  to  their 
digestion  of  materialism,  other  doctrines  had  been 
propounded  by  men  far  superior  in  talent  to  Zola 
and  in  intelligence — as  distinguished  from  mere  wit — to 
Anatole  France.  The  books  of  these  men  had  never 
been  popular  enough  to  counteract  the  coarser  current, 
but  they  were  universally  known  all  the  same,  and  the 
public  mind  had  only  to  turn  to  them  for  the  systems 
without  which  the  French  always  seem  uncomfortable. 
In  this  way  a  body  of  ideas  which  had  been  clear  and 
distinct  in  the  minds  of  thousands  of  cultivated  in- 
dividuals, but  had  been  hindered  in  their  expansion  by 
unfavourable  environment,  was  suddenly  liberated,  and, 
rapidly  diffused  at  present  by  literature  and  by  the 
Press,  took  possession  of  the  large  majority  among 
those  capable  of  lucid  thought. 

The  following  chapters  will  recapitulate  the  most 
vital  of  these  ideas. 


SECTION  II 

INTELLECTUAL  PREPARATION  OF  THE  NEW  SPIRIT  BY  THE 
EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  BEST 

This  is  the  counterpart  of  the  preparation  for  the 
intellectual  and  moral  decadence  of  France  which  I 
traced  to  the  philosophy  and  literature  of  the  Second 
Empire,  but  which  might  be  traced  further  back — to 
the  Revolutionists  and  their  prophets,  the  Encyclopaed- 
ists. As  I  said  in  the  first  chapters  of  Part  I,  France 
was  degraded  by  the  poor  philosophy  of  its  leading 
circles  during  the  greater  portion  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  if  this  lowering  of  the  rational  light  had 
continued,  no  shock,  no  catastrophe  would  have  been 
strong  enough  to  produce  the  effects  which  we  hope  to 
see  arise  more  and  more  from  the  awakening  of  1905. 
In  fact,  the  Revolution  was  no  lesson  for  most  of  its 
cultivated  adherents,  and,  in  the  same  way,  1870  was 
in  a  few  years  forgotten  by  the  masses,  because  in  one 
case,  the  metaphysics  of  the  Revolution  remained  in  the 
ascendancy  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  in  the  other  only  a  few  exceptional  intellects  were 
shaken  by  the  German  victory.  The  lucky  coincidence, 
without  which  this  book  would  have  no  object,  was  the 
combination  of  a  great  patriotic  emotion  of  the  nation 
at  large  with  a  radical  intellectual  change  of  the  most 
distinguished  thinkers  and  writers.  Were  it  not  for 
this  conversion  the  effort  of  France  towards  her  re- 

174 


Reaction  Against  the  Revolution      175 

covery  would  depend  entirely  upon  the  political  fluctua- 
tions, and  would  no  doubt  be  in  great  jeopardy,  whereas 
in  the  present  circumstances  politics  can  only  weaken 
or  retard  it  transiently.  The  fact  is  that  the  deteriora- 
tion of  the  country  would  be  at  an  end  at  once,  if  the 
handful  of  politicians  who  make  use  against  it  of  a 
superannuated  machinery  could  either  be  swept  aside 
by  popular  indignation,  or,  which  is,  unfortunately,  less 
probable — be  won  to  saner  ideas.  There  might  be  more 
mistakes  made,  but  the  national  atmosphere  would 
seem  incredibly  more  pure  and  freed  from  its  deceptive 
or  baneftd  influences.  As  it  is,  the  least  defeat  of  Par- 
liamentary omnipotence,  even  the  least  obstacle  placed 
in  the  way  of  the  Radical  majority,  is  attended  with  a 
feeling  of  universal  relief.  All  this  would  be  impossible 
if  the  intellectual  and  ethical,  or  sentimental  changes, 
which  the  following  chapters  will  point  out,  were  not 
deeper  than  any  similar  modifications  of  the  national 
standpoint  since  the  Revolution;  unquestionably  more 
so,  for  instance,  than  the  poetic  conversion  produced 
by  Chateaubriand  with  the  assistance  of  Napoleon's 
strong  hand. 

I.    Reaction  against  the  Revolution 

The  French  Revolution  is  one  of  those  colossal 
events  which  not  only  baffle  adequate  appreciation,  but 
balk  the  imaginative  effort;  after  years  of  deeply 
human  reading  which  ought  to  result,  and  apparently 
does  result,  in  vivid  tahleauXy  even  the  historian  finds 
himself  inclined  to  think  of  the  years  1 789-1 794  as 
belonging  to  an  age  divided  from  ours  by  something 
mysterious  and  intangible,  almost  unreal. 

The  political  consequences  of  the  Revolution  par- 


176  The  Return  of  the  Light 

take  of  the  same  character.  They  forced  themselves 
on  the  world  with  a  violence  which  made  criticism  as 
difficult  as  composure  may  be  during  a  natural  cata- 
clysm, and  after  sixscore  years,  democracy  is  still  a 
dogma  in  millions  of  intellects,  while  the  fascination  of 
the  word  Liberty,  without  any  analysis  of  its  content, 
has  lost  little  of  its  power. 

It  would,  therefore,  be  a  momentous  occurrence  if, 
in  the  very  country  which  made  the  Revolution,  an 
intellectual  change  should  happen  universal  enough  to 
counteract  the  weird  effects  I  mentioned  above,  and  to 
be  in  itself  a  sort  of  living  criticism  of  the  Revolutionary 
principles.  A  mood  may  be  modified  to  some  extent  by 
arguments,  but  it  can  only  be  displaced  by  another 
mood. 

Very  few  signs  of  such  a  transformation  were  seen 
during  the  nineteenth  century.  There  were,  indeed, 
many  people  whom  their  tastes,  traditions,  and  too 
often  their  interests  or  prejudices  preserved  from  the 
revolutionary  fascination,  and  they  had  representatives, 
far  better  than  themselves,  in  literature,  philosophy,  and 
politics.  The  names  of  De  Maistre,  and  De  Bonald,  of 
Lamartine — in  his  early  verse — and  of  Berryer,  need 
no  comment.  The  Church,  too,  looked  upon  the 
Revolution  as  a  sort  of  heresy,  and  this  attitude  ulti- 
mately resulted  in  the  promulgation  of  the  celebrated 
Syllabus  of  Pius  IX,  a  document  in  which  all  the  con- 
sequences derived  from  the  dogma  of  liberty  were 
anathematized.  But  whatever  might  be  the  authority 
of  these  opponents  to  the  principles  of  1789,  the  former 
foimd  favour  in  every  part  of  Europe — in  Italy  more 
than  anywhere  else — and  either  initiated,  or  assisted, 
or  attended  a  universal  rise,  first  of  the  bourgeois  classes 
against  the  autocracy  and  aristocracy,  later  of  the 


Reaction  Against  the  Revolution      177 

working  classes  against  capitalists  of  all  descriptions. 
In  France  alone,  the  minor  revolutions  of  1830  and 
1848,  the  Commune  in  1871,  the  Republican  election  of 
1876,  and  the  Socialist  election  of  1898,  were  all  mani- 
festations of  the  same  spirit — they  all  indicated  the 
civic  and  economic  ascent  of  classes  so  far  regarded 
as  inferior. 

Meanwhile  a  parallel  state  of  mind  became  apparent, 
which  was  called  Liberalism — that  is  to  say,  an  opinion 
savouring  of  the  doctrines  of  Liberty — and  was  an 
attempt  of  people  rather  conquered  by  than  won  to  the 
Revolution  to  present  its  tenets  in  a  light  which  might 
make  them  acceptable  even  to  the  Catholic  Church. 
This  so-called  Liberal  state  of  mind  arose  from  the 
certainty  in  which  these  people  were  that  no  human 
power  could  resist  the  Revolutionary  headway,  and  that 
it  was  sheer  waste  of  energy  to  try  to  do  it.  Such  a 
compromise  was  inevitable.  It  found  one  great  theorist, 
M.  de  Tocqueville,  the  author  of  a  book  on  the  United 
States  of  America,  which  has  hardly  taken  a  few 
wrinkles,  and  several  champions  whose  names  will  be 
remembered  among  those  of  great  and  good  men:  the 
Comte  de  Montalembert,  the  Due  de  Broglie,  Pere 
Lacordaire,  Bishop  Dupanloup.  But  compromises  are 
seldom  successful.  This  one  failed  repeatedly,  the  last 
time  in  a  conspicuous  manner,  when  the  ralliement 
advocated  by  Pope  Leo  XIII  obviously  fell  short  of  its 
comparatively  modest  object,  and  had  finally  to  be 
negatived  by  the  next  Pope,  Pius  X.  The  Liberals,  on 
one  hand,  never  were  acknowledged  by  the  ultramon- 
tane Catholics,  and  as  a  portion  of  the  modem  world 
they  were  so  scanty  a  body  as  to  be  almost  unperceived. 
Altogether,  neither  the  anathemas  of  Pius  IX  nor  the 
concessions  of  Leo  XIII  were  of  historical  weight  in  the 


178  The  Return  of  the  Light 

mighty  Revolutionary  development,  and  we  shall  pre- 
sently see  that  the  reaction  came  from  men  foreign  or 
hostile  to  theological  considerations,  and  was  chiefly 
produced  by  positive  experience. 

Nothing  can  be  more  striking  than  the  impression 
left  on  Taine  by  the  events  of  1 870-1 871,  and  visible  in 
his  correspondence.^  This  pure  idealist,  whom  I  have 
described  in  another  chapter  as  completely  indifferent 
to  contingencies,  had  a  whole  portion  of  his  soul  re- 
vealed to  him  by  the  war  and  the  Commune.  He  was  a 
patriot  and  a  man  of  order  quite  as  much  as  a  philo- 
sopher. Everything  sounds  surprising  and  almost  ex- 
aggeratedly simple  in  this  great  writer,  but  that  is 
because  he  lived  in  a  realm  of  abstractions.  The  dis- 
covery of  his  own  feelings  reacted  upon  him  as  it  must 
on  a  man  accustomed  to  generalize  from  all  and  any 
data,  and  he  who  had  been  so  remote  from  political 
considerations  started  the  great  political  work  which 
eventually  became  the  monument  called  Origines  de  la 
France  Contemporaine. 

The  only  work  worth  mentioning  on  the  same 
subject  was  Thiers*s  well-known  but  very  superficial 
Histoire  de  la  Revolution.  Taine  applied  to  these  new 
researches  a  mind  trained  in  three  or  four  departments 
of  literary  activity,  and  a  method  which  even  his  sys- 
tematic intellect  could  not  deprive  of  its  highly  scientific 
character.  The  results  were  remarkable.  Even  the 
criticism  of  such  a  carping  specialist  as  M.  Aulard  leaves 
the  Origines  untouched  as  a  great  historical  monument. 

Now,  what  is,  on  the  whole,  the  Origines  de  la  France 
Contemporaine?  It  is,  in  the  first  place,  an  historical 
investigation,  the  conclusion  of  which  is  the  emphatic 
statement  that  the  Revolution  was  the  work,  not  by 

*  H.  Taine,  Sa  Vie  et  sa  Correspondance,  Paris,  Hachette,  Ltd. 


Reaction  Against  the  Revolution      179 

any  means  of  the  nation — which  only  wanted  reforms — 
but  of  the  violent  few,  whose  history  is  that  of  the  clubs 
of  Paris  and  the  largest  provincial  towns.  In  the  second 
place,  it  is  an  analysis  tested  by  numerous  facts,  of  the 
Revolutionary  mentality.  What  is  this?  Practically 
that  of  Rousseau  as  appearing  mostly  from  the  Contrat 
Social.  In  fact,  whenever  the  Revolutionists  spoke  in 
their  own  name,  the  principles  could  easily  be  brought 
round  to  those  of  Rousseau's  short  treatise,  and  they 
never  lost  a  chance  of  expressing  their  sense  of  in- 
debtedness to  him.  And  what  is  the  Contrat  Social? 
An  entirely  idealistic  construction  which  even  the 
literary  genius  of  its  author  could  not  have  made  the 
basis  of  an  immense  social  rebuilding  if  the  age  had  not 
been  poisoned  by  speculation,  and,  above  all,  if  cir- 
cumstances had  not  been  so  extraordinary. 

The  Contrat  Social  is  a  mere  play  of  the  intelligence. 
Rousseau  made  abstraction  while  writing  it  from  all 
historical  data,  and  although  he  had  more  political 
sense  than  his  modem  critics  will  admit,  ^  he  finally 
produced  a  work  which  is  nothing  else  than  a  philosophi- 
cal hypothesis.  Society  existed  exclusively  by  the  free 
consent  of  the  individuals  composing  it ;  so  the  author- 
ity or  government  could  only  be  delegated  by  the  commu- 
nity to  one  or  several  representatives,  and  could  not  be 
alienated  for  ever.  Careful  distinction  ought  to  be  made 
between  the  sovereign,  who  in  reality  is  the  community, 
and  the  government  that  is  only  its  representative. 
There  were  no  subjects ;  equality  was  the  basis  of  society, 
and  liberty  was  its  corollary,  as  nobody  can  be  bound  to 
his  equal  for  a  longer  time  than  he  chooses  to  be. 

» The  Contrat  Social  concludes  in  favour  of  decentralization,  which, 
in  fact,  is  acknowledged  to-day  as  one  of  the  best  counter-weights  to 
the  tyranny  of  democracy. 


i8o  The  Return  of  the  Light 

The  Revolution  applied  these  ideas  in  their  rigour. 
Instead  of  reforming  the  monarchy,  it  made  a  tabula 
rasa  of  French  society,  and  persuaded  itself  that  it  was 
rebuilding  it  according  to  the  superior  standards 
summed  up  in  the  motto,  "  Liberty,  equality,  fraternity.** 

This  is  not  the  place  to  criticize  the  Contrat  Social; 
this  has  been  done  a  hundred  times  before.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  the  evil  to  which  the  present  volume  reverts 
in  numberless  passages,  viz.,  the  inadequacy  of  a  gov- 
ernment immediately  dependent  upon  the  multitude 
is  the  direct  outcome  of  the  doctrine  of  Rousseau. 
What  I  deal  with  here  is  merely  the  influence  of  Taine's 
analysis  of  the  Revolutionary  mentality  as  reflected 
from  the  Contrat  Social.  After  several  years  of  hard 
work  on  his  book,  Taine  endeavoured  to  disengage  his 
own  impression,  and  it  was  so  elemental  that  he  was 
afraid  it  might  appear  ridiculous.  It  could  be  summed 
up  as  follows:  Rousseau  and  the  Revolutionists,  Taine 
said,  imagined  that  the  government  of  a  nation  was  a 
very  simple  arrangement  which  only  needed  reason  to 
be  perfect.  It  was  an  enormous  mistake.  Politics  is  less 
a  science  than  an  art,  and  this  art  is  one  of  infinite  com- 
plication, which  only  long  practice  helped  by  heredi- 
tary qualities  can  teach.  The  Revolution,  ignoring  this 
principle,  was  doomed  to  build  on  the  unreal,  and,  in 
fact,  it  appears  as  purely  systematic.  Taine's  ideal  in 
politics  was  evidently  the  English  view,  which  is  less 
a  view  than  an  ethos ^  endlessly  suggesting  reform,  no 
matter  how  partial,  rather  than  wholesale  destruction 
and  rebuilding. 

The  reputation  of  Taine,  when  he  wrote  the  eleven 
volumes  of  the  Origines  was  at  its  zenith.  He  was 
universally  looked  upon  as  impartial.  As  a  philosopher 
he  could  not  be  regarded  as  exaggeratedly  attached  to 


Reaction  Against  the  Revolution      i8i 

the  beliefs  of  the  past ;  in  fact  he  professed  to  ignore  the 
past  in  his  speculations,  and  with  the  tendencies  of  an 
ascetic  he  had  been  the  protagonist  of  materialism.  As 
a  critic  and  writer  he  had  no  rival.  Altogether  his 
spirit,  method,  and  art  had  made  him  less  the  chief 
of  a  school  than  a  model,  and  whoever  in  French 
literature  claimed  any  degree  of  sincerity  acknowledged 
his  influence. 

It  was  inevitable  that  his  historic  views,  startling 
as  they  were  to  a  generation  which  had  been  accustomed 
to  take  the  Revolution  as  a  whole  and  without  discus- 
sion, should  modify  the  concepts  so  far  admitted.  A 
few  people  entered  reservations;  the  Due  de  Broglie 
said  that  he  could  easily  bring  forward  as  many  facts 
in  favour  of  the  Revolution  as  M.  Taine  had  adduced 
against  it.  But  there  were  no  protests,  and  after  a 
quarter  of  a  century  the  effect  of  the  Origines  is  obvi- 
ously greater  every  day.  Taine's  criticisms  have  been 
substantiated  by  most  of  his  successors.  His  purely 
historic  views  on  the  Revolution  are  those  of  M.  Sorel, 
of  M.  Madelin,  and  of  M.  Len6tre,  and  M.  Aulard  has 
lost  rather  than  gained  in  his  encounter  with  grateful 
disciples  of  the  master.  The  epic  grandeur  of  the 
Revolution  still  remains  with  the  nation  in  arms  against 
all  Europe,  but  it  has  been  taken  away  from  the  maniacs 
of  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public.  The  apologists  of 
Robespierre  and  Marat,  even  of  Danton,  are  so  few  as 
to  be  invisible,  and  if  M.  Clemenceau  were  to  speak 
to-day  of  the  lesson,  as  he  called  it,  given  to  Kings  on 
January  21,  1793,  in  the  tone  he  could  take  ten  years 
ago,  he  would  sound  more  ridiculous  than  horrible. 
As  to  the  analysis  of  the  political  philosophy  of  the 
Revolutionists,  its  results  seem  to  have  been  final. 
The   notion   of   a   wholesale   remodelling   of   a   large 


1 82  The  Return  of  the  Light 

country  appears  absurd,  and  the  sovereignty  of  the 
multitude  is  either  an  academic  notion,  which  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas  might  hold,  or  it  is  an  absurdity. 

This  change  in  public  opinion  showed  itself  in  a 
manner  that  could  admit  of  no  doubt  in  1912,  at  the 
time  of  the  Rousseau  celebrations.  The  fact  is,  that 
after  Taine,  two  writers  of  rare  merit,  M.  Faguet  and 
M.  Jules  Lemaitre,  had  resumed  ex  professo  the  in- 
vestigation into  the  Swiss  philosopher  begun  in  connec- 
tion with  the  Revolution  by  the  author  of  Les  OrigineSy 
and  their  conclusions  had  been  severe.  Rousseau  was 
a  genius,  no  doubt,  but  genius  has  been  known  many 
times  to  co-exist  with  more  than  serious  shortcomings. 
In  this  instance  these  shortcomings  were  a  callousness 
to  moral  niceties  which  seems  unsurpassable,  and  a  rare 
power  for  seeing  the  wrong  or  paradoxical  side  of  a 
question.  Rousseau  was  a  great  writer,  a  contemptible 
character,  and  what  the  French  language  calls  better 
than  any  other,  an  esprit  faux.  Later  on  M.  Paul 
Bourget  was  to  dwell — somewhat  ponderously — on  an- 
other taint  of  Rousseau,  which  he  called  sheer  lunacy, 
and  which  the  readers  of  the  philosopher's  well-known 
letter  to  Hume  must  have  noticed,  even  if  they  called 
it  by  a  milder  name.  As  it  is,  when  it  was  mooted  in 
Parliament  that  the  Rousseau  celebrations  should  as- 
sume a  national  character,  M.  Maurice  Barres,  who 
rose  to  speak  against  the  bill,  was  certainly  the  mouth- 
piece of  all  the  cultivated  portion  of  the  country.  In 
fact,  when  the  celebrations  did  take  place,  and  when, 
as  had  been  proposed,  the  Government  appeared 
officially  at  them,  the  absence  of  literary  men  suf- 
ficiently independent  to  be  representative  of  their 
profession,  proved  clearly  that  the  event  had  been 
changed   into   a   mere   political   manifestation.     The 


Reaction  Against  the  Revolution      183 

notion  that  Rousseau  was  a  benefactor  of  the  country 
whose  language  he  wrote  with  such  mastery  seems 
impossible  to  revive,  and  the  refutation  of  minor  errors 
on  the  part  of  M.  Faguet  and  M.  Jules  Lemaitre  will 
never  amount  to  a  rehabilitation. 

Taine  was  not  alone  affected  by  the  war  and  the 
Commune  to  the  extent  I  have  just  indicated.  With 
less  of  the  feeling  of  a  catastrophe,  and  more  of  a  dis- 
appointment, with  elegance,  and  often  with  the  disdain 
of  elegance  for  coarse  contingencies,  the  other  prophet 
of  the  Second  Empire,  Renan,  after  taking  the  same 
lesson,  took  almost  the  same  method  to  enforce  it,  and 
advocated  similar  remedies  to  prevent  its  repetition. 
His  surprise  at  the  brutality  of  the  Prussians,  when  he 
had  been  used  so  long  to  regard  their  country  as  the 
home  of  culture,  did  not  shake  his  belief  in  culture;  it 
only  made  it  more  decided.  But  the  signal  failure  of  the 
Republic  in  the  first  two  decades  of  its  existence  left 
upon  him  a  deep  distrust  of  the  democratic  aptitude 
for  government.  His  book.  La  Reforme  Intellectuelle 
et  Morale  de  la  France,  is  an  apology  for  the  supremacy 
of  the  intelligence,  and  an  overt  indictment  of  the 
democracy.  Renan  thought  that  no  country  can  be 
true  to  itself  unless  the  best  in  it  are  responsible  for  the 
government;  and  his  natural  tendency  was  to  look  for 
such  an  aristocracy  among,  not  the  so-called  best-bom, 
but  the  best-informed.  Sages  and  philosophers  ought 
to  be  the  legislators  in  his  Commonwealth. 

This  was  an  idea  which  experience  had  to  test  like 
every  other.  It  was  tested  and  found  wanting  when  the 
Dreyfusist  "Intellectuals"  were  associated  with  politi- 
cians in  framing  the  public  spirit  of  France,  and  when 
M.  Berthelot,  Renan's  bosom  friend  and  a  chemist  of 
universal  repute,  was  made  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs. 


i84  The  Return  of  the  Light 

The  results  were  laughable.  But  Renan's  name  was 
so  great  towards  1880,  his  judgment  had  so  much 
weight,  that  to  see  him  secede  in  cold  blood  from  the 
democratic  side  took  in  the  eyes  of  the  elite  the  im- 
portance of  an  historical  fact.  The  impression  it  must 
have  made  on  M.  Jules  Lemaitre  and  on  a  number  of 
Lycee  professors  is  easily  gathered  from  their  intellectual 
curve. 

On  the  whole,  the  Revolutionists'  fallacy,  that  power 
ought  to  be  vested  in  the  multitude,  had  been  exploded 
long  before  the  European  event  which  showed  its  ab- 
surdity ;  the  Revolution  appeared  not  only  to  the  then 
rising  school  of  the  Action  Frangaise,  but  to  many 
reflective  minds,  as  a  movement  completely  deviated 
from  its  proper  object,  and  the  plain  but  far-reaching 
principle  that  a  country's  government  ought  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  experts  was  ready  to  pass  into  popular 
consciousness. 

2.    Reaction  against  Scientism 

Another  *'idol"  which,  in  1905,  was  still  standing, 
and  blindly  worshipped  by  the  millions,  had  also  been 
considerably  shaken  before  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  That  was  Science,  as  its  name  used  to  be  then 
written,  like  that  of  a  god  or  living  genius. 

It  was  unfortunate  that  the  famous  phrase,  "the 
bankruptcy  of  science,"  was,  towards  1895,  fathered 
on  Brunetiere,  who  was  not  responsible  for  more  than 
its  popular  commentary.  Brunetiere  was  more  dreaded 
than  respected ;  he  was  a  formidable  polemist,  with  un- 
suspected resources,  which  made  him  the  more  danger- 
ous, but  his  rhetoric  was  often  empty,  his  apparent 
logic  was  frequently  mere  dialectics,  and  he  had  a  bold 


Reaction  Against  Scientism  185 

way  of  generalizing,  which  put  one  on  his  guard  against 
him.  The  consequence  was  that  the  formula  "Science 
is  a  bankrupt"  was  challenged  at  once  as  being  one  of 
the  epigrammatic  statements  habitual  to  the  critic, 
and  numberless  refutations  of  it  were  given  by  men 
worth  speaking  for  science. 

It  then  appeared  that  Science  was  not  a  bankrupt, 
since  it  had  not  made  the  promises  it  was  accused 
of  not  having  redeemed,  and  consequently  the  emotion 
created  by  M.  Brunetiere  had  been  unfounded. 

Yet  this  emotion  was  not  in  vain.  It  might  be  true 
that  Science,  even  as  represented  by  Descartes  in 
La  Methode,  or  Condorcet  in  his  Esguisse,  or  Renan  in 
VAvenir  de  la  Science — ^had  not  hinted  that  the  key  to 
the  universal  riddle  should  be  found  in  Science  properly 
deduced,  but  innumerable  people  had  believed  that 
such  a  promise  had  been  made,  and  among  the  bour- 
geoisie nearest  to  the  lower  classes  the  belief  was  hardly 
short  of  a  dogma,  and  productive  of  powerful  effects. 
It  was,  therefore,  all-important,  that  if  there  existed  a 
misunderstanding  concerning  Science,  it  should  be  dis- 
pelled in  a  way  likely  to  serve  at  the  same  time  as 
an  illumination  and  a  clearing  away  of  a  dangerous 
sophism. 

In  fact,  the  consequences  of  this  belief  in  Science  bore 
more  immediately  on  practical  life  than  was  generally 
supposed.  The  logic  of  the  people  could  not  help  in- 
ferring that  the  triumphant  progress  of  Science  meant 
the  end  of  vSuperstition,  and  Superstition,  since  the  days 
of  Voltaire,  was  difficult  to  distinguish  from  faith. 
This  was  the  speculative  victory  of  Science,  and  it 
enabled  the  unreflective  individual  to  trust  to  his 
betters  for  a  system  of  verities  that  would  at  last  be 
worthy  of  the  name;  many  a  poor  school-teacher  who 


1 86  The  Return  of  the  Light 

had  just  caught  a  ghmpse  of  modem  knowledge  at  his 
training  college,  lived  in  the  hope  that  education  would 
some  day,  perhaps  in  the  near  future,  furnish  a  com- 
plete explanation  of  the  world  and  life,  and  provide 
simple  rules  to  replace  the  superannuated  ethics.  But 
there  was  another  prospect  which  appealed  to  even 
larger  numbers.  Science  meant  speculative  light,  but 
it  meant  also  practical  progress,  civilization,  a  maximum 
of  happiness  on  a  minimum  of  effort — the  vision,  in  a 
word,  which  the  Socialists  everlastingly  conjured  up 
before  their  simple  audiences. 

Religion,  with  what  its  enemies  call  her  ready-made 
truth  and  her  ready-made  bliss  in  an  hypothetic  future, 
has  often  been  charged  with  soothing  believers  into  apa- 
thy. But  no  apathy  could  exceed  the  passivity  into  which 
the  new  faith  caused  ignorant  people  to  settle.  It  left 
them  only  the  outward  routine  of  morals ;  the  inner  im- 
pulse was  promptly  exhausted  in  default  of  a  living  source. 

Therefore,  it  was  fortunate  for  the  moral  health  of 
France  that  an  exaggerated  mistrust  of  Science  suc- 
ceeded an  exaggerated  belief  in  it.  It  was  good  that  the 
notion  of  effort  in  the  domain  of  life  as  well  as  in  that  of 
thought  was  restored  to  the  public  consciousness,  even  at 
the  cost  of  some  disquietude.  Effort  is  better  than  ignoble 
satisfaction  and,  above  all,  silly  certitude.  There  was 
more  virility  in  France  after  Brimetiere's  somewhat  the- 
atrical demonstration  than  before,  and  it  was  virility  of 
the  best  kind,  that  which  arises  from  lucid  thought. 

3.    Reaction  against  Materialism 

I  have  pointed  out  above  that  Realism  in  literature 
was  not  exclusively  a  literary  method,  but  had  a  moral 
substratum  which  was  promptly  to  appear  when  Realism 


Reaction  Against  Materialism        187 

grew  as  radical  as  it  was  in  its  nature  to  be,  and  became 
known  as  Naturalism.  This  underlying  principle  was 
the  conviction  that  as  there  is  neither  beauty  nor  ugli- 
ness in  the  subjects  of  literary  composition,  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  moral  good  or  evil  either.  So  the  same 
sincerity  which  absolves  an  artist  from  the  reproach  of 
having  no  preference  for  beauty  also  absolves  a  man 
from  the  reproach  of  cynicism.  The  sincerity  of  pessim- 
ism was  all  the  ethics  of  the  school  of  Zola.  I  shall 
draw  attention  in  another  chapter  to  the  converse 
influence  of  psychological  literature  on  the  tone  of  the 
writers  who  are  attracted  by  it;  moral  elevation  is  its 
immediate  consequence  along  with  literary  distinction. 
So  I  need  only  remind  the  reader  of  this  chapter  that 
among  the  ideas  which  had  been  "seeds  of  light,"  and 
only  waited  for  an  opportunity  to  develop,  was  the 
condemnation  of  materialism  in  literature  and  art 
which  Brunetiere  once  more  called  in  1896,  the  Revival 
of  Idealism.  While  the  lower  classes  were  absorbing 
slowly  and  after  long  reluctance  the  poison  of  Natural- 
ism, there  was  an  elite,  led  by  Brunetiere  in  criticism, 
by  M.  de  Vogue  and  M.  Paul  Bourget  in  literature,  and 
by  Puvis  de  Chavannes  in  art,  which  had  broken  away 
from  the  stifling  dungeon  and  lived  in  sentiment  instead 
of  living  in  sensation.  Let  any  great  emotion  impress 
the  multitude  with  the  feeling  that  sometimes  sacrifice 
may  be  as  natural  as  self-seeking  and  more  attractive, 
and  this  noble  philosophy  would  be  sure  to  meet  a 
spontaneous  demand. 

4.    Reaction  against  Internationalism 

The  well-known  name  of  this  reaction  is  Nationalism, 
and  it  is  a  phenomenon  which  has  reappeared  many 


1 88  The  Return  of  the  Light 

times  in  the  course  of  French  history.  In  its  latest 
form  it  was  represented  and  embodied  rather  than 
formulated  by  Paul  Deroulede.  Deroulede  was  tall 
and  warm-hearted,  eloquent  and  poetic;  this  was 
enough  for  some  people  to  call  him  quixotic.  In  reality 
he  was  a  shrewd  and  practical  organizer  as  well  as  a 
bard,  and  no  idea  of  ridicule  ought  to  attach  to  his 
quixotism.  He  was  not  twenty  when  the  War  of  1870 
broke  out,  but  he  immediately  enlisted,  and  when  a 
short  time  afterwards  he  was  wounded  and  incapaci- 
tated, his  mother  came  to  his  general  with  her  younger 
son,  a  lad  of  barely  seventeen,  and  offered  him  as  a 
substitute.  After  the  conclusion  of  the  peace,  which  he 
regarded  as  shameful,  Deroulede  devoted  his  life  to  the 
noblest  propagandism  for  the  return  of  the  lost  pro- 
vinces, and  to  an  endless  warfare  against  the  enemies  of 
France  out  and  inside  the  frontiers.  His  conspiracy, 
trial,  and  banishment  are  well-known  episodes  of  a 
career  which  no  suspicion  of  selfishness  or  attitudinizing 
ever  touched. 

Edouard  Drumont  was  the  theorist  of  Nationalism, 
its  historian,  and  for  many  years  its  dreaded  pamphle- 
teer. For  Drumont  the  real  enemy  of  France  was  not 
the  German,  but  the  Jew.  The  German  could  only  be 
dangerous  when  he  broke  through  the  frontier,  but  the 
Jew  had  no  such  effort  to  make.  He  was  comfortably 
settled  in  Paris,  within  easy  reach  of  all  the  vital  organs 
of  French  life.  These,  of  course,  he  could  not  handle 
himself,  but  it  was  child's  play  for  him  to  set  in  motion 
the  links  between  himself  and  the  Government.  Dru- 
mont firmly  believed  in  the  equation  of  finance  with 
politics  and  of  finance  with  Israel,  and  the  Panama 
affair  came  as  a  striking  confirmation  of  his  theory. 
The  immediate  consequence  was  not  inconsiderable. 


Reaction  Against  Internationalism    189 

Nationalism  took  on  the  much  more  active  form  of 
Boulangism,  and  if  Boulanger  had  had  the  least  touch 
of  the  Roman  in  him,  the  play  would  have  promptly 
been  played  out;  the  Parliamentary  Republic,  which 
was  making  such  a  poor  debute  would  have  been  swept 
off,  and  men  less  open  to  bribery  would  have  replaced 
the  unpleasantly  notorious  Chamber. 

The  lineal  descendant  of  Drumont's  Nationalism  is 
the  doctrine  of  the  same  name  actively  promoted  since 
the  Dreyfus  affair  by  the  Action  Frangaise.  The 
founder  of  this  group,  M,  Henri  Vaugeois,  saw  in  the 
Dreyfus  agitation  the  proof  of  the  presence  within 
the  frontiers  of  France  of  the  hostile  influence  which 
Drumont  had  revealed  before  the  Panama  affair.  Only 
it  appeared  to  him  that  the  Jew  was  not  alone  to  live 
quartered  in  France,  fattening  upon  the  best  of  the 
land;  in  his  opinion  there  were  three  more  classes  of 
people  who  have  no  business  in  the  country;  the 
Protestants,  the  Freemasons,  and  the  nondescripts 
from  all  parts  of  the  world,  whom  he  calls  the  Meteques 
or  barbarians.  The  evident  duty  of  good  Frenchmen 
was  to  rid,  if  not  the  territory,  at  any  rate  the  Govern- 
ment, of  this  quadruple  plague,  and  *'La  France  aux 
Frangais"  is  a  motto  which  it  is  imperative  to  take  at 
once  in  its  literal  meaning. 

Such  a  doctrine  was  sure  to  be  frequently  exaggerated 
from  Nationalism  to  chauvinism,  and  to  sound  more 
resolute  than  Christian,  or  even  reasonable.  Inter- 
preted by  a  man  like  M.  Leon  Daudet,  with  whom 
violence  and  exaggeration  are  a  style,  no  matter  how 
attractive  to  some  people  by  its  picturesqueness,  its 
inevitable  result  would  be  much  more  to  rouse  hatreds 
than  to  create  unity.  It  is  doing  a  poor  turn  to  one's 
countrymen  to  persuade  them  that  they  are  better 


190  The  Return  of  the  Light 

than  everybody  else,  hinting  at  the  same  time  that 
everybody  else  is  mentally  or  morally  deficient.  Yet 
the  Nationalism  even  of  these  overheated  people,  helped 
as  it  was  by  an  excellent  criticism  of  much  in  our 
democracy,  was  not  wasted.  It  acted  as  a  tonic,  and 
at  a  time  when  the  tendency  was  towards  universal 
dissolution,  it  was  not  so  much  of  a  fault  as  it  might 
have  been,  if  it  mostly  appealed  to  young  men,  and  was 
likely  to  send  them  excited  into  the  streets.  The  clam- 
our of  a  popular  manifestation  was  welcome  after  years 
of  unquestioning  submission  or  stupid  inertness. 

5.    Success  of  Provincial  Literature 

What  is  called  *' Provincialisme**  is  intimately  con- 
nected with  Nationalism,  and,  in  fact,  might  be  re- 
garded as  its  literary  form.  It  does  not  belong  to  any 
writer  or  thinker  in  particular,  as  its  roots  were  visible 
in  a  great  deal  of  the  literary  production  antecedent 
to  the  current  use  of  the  name,  yet  it  is  difficult  to  view 
it  apart  from  the  personal  development  of  one  highly 
interesting  individual,  M.  Maurice  Barres. 

M.  Barr^  is  a  very  fair  type  of  modem  Frenchman, 
and  almost  an  epitome  of  the  progress  of  France  which 
this  book  endeavours  to  follow.  He  started  with  all  the 
characteristics  of  the  diseases  of  his  day.  He  was  an 
exasperated  dilettante,  passionately  fond  of  intellectual 
enjoyment,  haughtily  disdainful  of  inferior  pleasures, 
and  hardly  less  so  of  inferior  duties.  His  early  volumes. 
Sous  rCEil  des  Barhares,  U Homme  Libre,  Le  Jardin  de 
Berenice,  were  handbooks  of  exquisite  sensualism.  Yet 
he  had  solidity  under  his  apparently  unbridled  fancy,  he 
had  a  sound  judgment,  his  power  of  analysis  was  too 
great  to  admit  of  long  self-deception,  and  he  could  but 


Success  of  Provincial  Literature       191 

weary  of  a  search  after  elusive  pleasures,  which  endless 
variety  alone  was  capable  of  prolonging. 

In  fact,  by  the  time  he  wrote  Les  Deracines  he  had 
discovered  a  source  of  self-realization  which,  beside 
those  he  had  known  so  far,  had  the  appearance  and  a 
great  deal  of  the  virtue  of  disinterestedness.  Man  soon 
wearies  of  sensations,  no  matter  how  refined,  but  he 
never  wearies  of  himself.  So,  if  something  in  him  could 
be  made  the  centre  of  his  affections,  he  would  no  longer 
be  at  the  mercy  of  adventitious  pleasures.  M.  Barres 
thought  he  found  this  centre  in  the  relation  of  man  with 
the  milieu  to  which  he  owes  the  most,  in  which  his  roots 
are  deepest — that  is  to  say,  his  home,  his  family,  his 
environment,  the  habits  and  traditions  of  his  province, 
the  spirit  of  la  petite  patrie — in  one  word,  that  which  is 
dearest  to  him,  because  it  is  most  instinctively  himself. 
The  help  which  a  nobleman  derives  from  the  thought 
of  his  ancestry  and  their  traditions  everybody  can  ob- 
tain from  a  similar  consideration  of  associations  which 
are  his  own,  and  which  nobody  can  borrow  or  steal  from 
him,  because  they  are  truly  part  of  his  soul. 

This  systematic  ''Provincialism,''  as  it  is  called — 
without  any  unpleasant  sense  being  any  longer  attached 
to  the  phrase — would  apparently  be  in  conflict  with  the 
comparatively  recent  idea  of  French  unity.  A  Lorrain 
like  M.  Barres  might  be  inclined  to  remember  that  his 
province  had  only  been  part  of  the  greater  France  for 
about  three  centuries,  but  the  power  of  exclusion  of 
everything  foreign  included  in  provincialism  compen- 
sates this  weak  point.  Besides,  the  natives  of  the 
French  provinces,  if  they  push  back  far  enough  into 
their  history,  ultimately  come  to  Celtic  times,  where 
they  have  to  stop,  and  where  once  more  they  find  unity. 
The  desire  for  this  refreshing  sensation  is  certainly  at 


192  The  Return  of  the  Light 

the  bottom  of  the  effort  made  by  many  recent  Celtic 
scholars  to  reduce  to  a  minimum  the  Prankish  and 
Roman  influx  into  the  autochthonous  population,  and 
it  shows  to  what  extent  a  real  French  feeling  is  alive 
under  conceptions  which  would  seem  to  belong  ex- 
clusively to  the  savant  or  to  the  poet. 

This  revelation  of  the  native  land,  not  as  a  poetic 
symbol,  but  as  a  sort  of  permanent  ancestor,  was  to 
produce  a  whole  train  of  practical  consequences.  M. 
Barr^s  gradually  came  to  reason  as  follows  : 

If  our  native  land  holds  in  itself  such  a  virtue,  it  must  be 
because  some  active  conviction  forced  itself  upon  the 
generations  which  came  before  us,  and  prevented  them 
from  adulterating  the  treasure  handed  down  to  them. 
Had  it  been  different,  had  there  been  a  breach  in  the 
precious  chain,  we  should  seek  in  vain  for  the  place  where 
we  find  our  support.  So  it  is  with  thankfulness  that  we 
look  back  to  the  past.  But  what  a  disheartening  prospect 
if  we  were  to  fear  that  our  successors  may  disregard  what 
we  ourselves  have  done  and  interrupt  the  tradition  we 
strive  to  keep  in  its  purity!  The  inference  which  such  a 
thought  immediately  brings  in  its  train  is  that  we  have 
certain  rights  which  our  descendants  ought  not  to  ignore, 
but  it  is  also  that  we  should  be  careful  to  respect  the  rights 
of  those  who  have  preceded  us.  In  this  way  a  continuity 
arises  in  the  history  of  our  country,  the  dead  participate 
in  the  life  which  they  have  transmitted  to  us;  they  have 
their  rights,  the  consideration  of  which  is  no  burden  on  our 
minds  but  a  refreshing  element  of  stability. 

A  mere  sentimental  fad,  some  people  have  said.  Is 
it  a  sentimental  fad  which  alone  makes  the  history  of 
our  country  not  only  interesting,  but  even  possible.^ 
Is  not  the  notion  of  the  presence  of  the  dead  at  the 
bottom   of   that   great   thing,   the   patriotism   of   the 


Reaction  Against  Socialism  193 

Japanese?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that  the  philosophy  of 
the  Roman  history  which  Fustel  de  Coulanges  has  so 
admirably  set  forth  in  La  Cite  Antique  is  built  on  an 
idea  almost  identical  with  this? 

We  are  compelled  to  admit  that  this  new  NationaHsm, 
half  poetic  and  half  scientific,  is  merely  the  intellectual 
formulation  of  one  of  the  most  venerable  instincts  in 
our  nature.  It  wears  an  appearance  of  austereness 
which  is  not  prepossessing  to  strangers,  it  is  true,  but 
it  also  gives  to  those  who  make  it  the  basis  of  their  civic 
life  that  touch  of  reasonableness  in  self-denial  which 
was  so  visible  in  the  ancients,  and  after  a  period  during 
which  elegance  was  to  renounce  patriotism  as  a  bar- 
baric selfishness — even  if  unmanly  indolence  attended 
the  sacrifice — such  an  attitude  appears  as  a  return  to  an 
essential  duty.  In  fact,  it  ought  not  to  be  called  a  new 
Nationalism  or  any  such  appellation;  it  is  merely  the 
feeling  which  must  have  been  deep  in  Jeanne  d'Arc, 
or  even  Philippe  Auguste,  and  to  which  the  modern 
inclination  towards  analysis  only  adds  consciousness. 

It  is  not  out  of  place  to  observe  also  that  a  system  of 
very  practical  reforms  termed  Regionalism  is  immedi- 
ately connected  with  Provincialism.  The  effort  towards 
decentralization  through  provincial  assemblies,  provin- 
cial legislation,  provincial  universities,  etc.,  is  part  of  the 
antagonism  against  the  tyranny  of  Parliamentarism  and 
the  routine  of  bureaucracy,  and  opens  practical  channels 
for  an  impulse  too  deep  not  to  tend  towards  actual 
realization. 

6.    Reaction  against  Socialism 

I  have  no  intention  to  number  Conservatism — ^honest 
and  intelligent  as  it  may  be  when  represented  by  men 
13 


194  The  Return  of  the  Light 

like  M.  Leroy-Beaulieu,  for  instance — as  one  of  the 
vital  tendencies  which,  long  before  1905,  had  held  out 
hopes  of  a  saner  spirit  in  France.  This  criticism  of  the 
Socialist  claims  is  too  purely  economical,  too  doctrinaire 
also,  to  rank  with  the  moral  motives  I  have  recapitu- 
lated in  the  preceding  chapters. 

The  only  resistances  to  Marxist  Socialism  worth  re- 
cording were  very  different  from  that  cold-hearted 
discussion.  There  was  on  one  hand  the  school  of 
Catholic  sociology,  practically  founded  by  Leo  XIII, 
and  which  devoted  itself  to  studying  economic  questions 
in  the  light  of  human  brotherhood  and,  on  the  other, 
Syndicalism  as  opposed  to  bourgeois  Socialism.  I  have 
not  the  least  doubt  but  the  efforts  of  men  like  M.  de  la 
Tour  du  Pin,  M.  Lorin,  M.  de  Mun,  etc.,  will  some 
day  be  recognized  when  it  appears  that  they  were  made 
in  the  only  spirit  combining  reasonableness  and  a 
Christian  point  of  view ;  but  the  practical  effects  of  their 
doctrine  are  more  visible  in  Belgium  and  Germany  than 
in  France,  and  I  ought  not  to  make  capital  of  them. 

It  is  very  different  with  Syndicalism,  which  in  the 
last  twenty  years  transformed  the  outlook  in  the  world 
of  labour,  and  at  the  same  time  gave  rise  to  the  highly 
interesting  philosophy  generally  known  as  that  of  M. 
Georges  Sorel.  Until  almost  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  French  Socialism  was  little  else  than  ancient 
Communism,  which  a  political  revolution  ought  to 
bring  from  theories  into  practice.  It  was  hardly  dif- 
ferent in  the  exposes  which  M.  Jaures  made  in  1898 
from  what  it  was  fifty  years  before,  when  Louis  Blanc 
was  its  representative.  Both  men  held  that  the  work- 
ing multitude  should  save  itself  from  its  exploiters  by 
sending  into  the  legislating  assemblies  enough  deputies 
to  secure  the  majority,  and  afterwards  modify  at  will 


Reaction  Against  Socialism  195 

the  regime  of  industrial  property.  But  after  half  a 
century  it  appeared  that  if  the  method  had  not  been 
perfected,  the  spirit  of  its  protagonists  had  not  im- 
proved either.  Certainly  Louis  Blanc  was  less  am- 
bitious, less  self-satisfied,  and  a  great  deal  more  efficient 
than  M.  Jaures.  There  were  a  number  of  Socialist 
deputies  in  the  Chamber,  but  they  were  either  bourgeois 
like  M.  Jaures  himself,  or  workmen  rapidly  evolving — 
under  the  influence  of  a  salary,  of  good  clothes,  and  fine 
talking — into  bourgeois.  Meanwhile  the  working-classes 
were  not  much  better  off ;  they  seemed  only  a  Httle  more 
bewildered  than  before  by  beginnings  as  disappointing 
as  the  dreams  of  yore. 

It  was  then  that  a  poor  consumptive  clerk,  Femand 
Pelloutier,  bethought  himself  of  a  new  idea.  Bourgeois 
Socialists  were  bourgeois  all  the  same ;  they  could  not  be 
representatives  of  labour.  Chambers  and  Senates  had 
nothing  in  common  with  the  working-classes.  Therefore 
the  working-classes  ought  to  turn  their  backs  upon 
them  and  try  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  But  could 
this  be  done?  Easily;  the  principle  of  Association  had 
been  recognized  although  its  legislation  was  not  com- 
plete;  there  were  trades  unions  everywhere.  Let  these 
multiply;  let  their  most  energetic  members  make  the 
need  of  them,  and  also  the  practicability  of  them, 
recognized  by  fomenting  strikes  on  any  pretence 
wherever  they  did  not  exist,  and  their  numbers  would 
soon  increase.  Supposing  that.  Syndicalism  thus  tak- 
ing strength,  a  wide  federation  of  unions  might  become 
possible,  some  day  this  federation  would  be  strong 
enough  to  vote  a  universal  strike,  during  which  the 
workmen  would  capture  all  the  industrial  instruments, 
and  from  that  day  use  them  without  any  reference  to 
capital.    This  is  the  hope  that  was  called  le  grand  Soir, 


196  The  Return  of  the  Light 

Pelloutier  died  too  soon  to  see  the  expansion  of 
Syndicalism  which  resulted  in  the  fotindation  of  the 
General  Labour  Confederacy  and  the  manifestations  of 
its  power  at  the  time  of  the  postal  and  railway  strikes, 
but  the  transformation  of  Socialism  from  a  political 
ticket  into  a  system  of  professional  vindications  was 
accomplished  when  he  died.  There  were  no  longer 
parties  in  France,  but  classes  more  deeply  divided  by 
their  conflicting  interests  than  nations  by  their  frontiers. 

One  man,  who  was  not  a  workman  himself,  but  was 
an  intimate  friend  of  Pelloutier,  was  a  keen  observer  and 
a  philosopher  worth  the  name,  saw  this  change  with  the 
gratification  possible  to  a  rarely-equipped  intellect  capa- 
ble of  subtle,  though  broad,  comprehension,  and  at 
the  same  time  with  a  satisfaction  of  a  higher  character 
which  I  will  presently  describe.  M.  Georges  Sorel  was 
past  middle  age  when  he  began  to  be  known.  He  had 
been  an  engineer  and  a  manufacturer  keenly  interested 
in  industrial,  economic,  and  labotir  problems,  and 
watching  the  organization  of  the  working-classes  with 
the  attention  both  of  the  observer  and  the  well-wisher. 
He  had  borne  away  from  the  Ecole  Polytechnique  the 
craving  after  plain  clear  truth  so  evident  in  the  writings 
of  Henri  Poincare,  and  he  spent  years  patiently  recon- 
sidering his  ideas,  and  cleansing,  as  he  says,  his  mind 
from  the  sediment  left  on  it  by  education.  He  led  an 
independent,  retired,  disinterested  life,  and  more  and 
more  his  esteem  went  exclusively  to  truth  and  sincerity, 
while  his  hatred  of  half-lies  or  half-truths  and  his 
contempt  of  pretence  increased  accordingly. 

The  results  of  this  long  course  of  meditations  were  a 
considerable  nimiber  of  communications  to  the  Mouve- 
ment  Socialiste,  a  review  of  very  high  standing,  which 
ultimately  reappeared  in  book  form.    Of  these  five  or 


Reaction  Against  Socialism  197 

six  volumes,  two  are  chiefly  remarkable,  and  embody 
all  the  author's,  not  only  experience,  but  very  interest- 
ing temperament.  One  is  Les  Illusions  du  Progrhs^  an 
analysis  of  the  historical  formation  of  the  deception 
known  as  Indefinite  Progress,  and  the  other  is  Re- 
flexions sur  la  Violence,  an  apology  for  heroism,  even  if 
associated  with  violence.  In  both  volumes  there  was, 
latent  or  explicit,  a  detestation  of  Parliamentary  So- 
cialism as  represented  by  M.  Jaur^,  and  a  keen  sym- 
pathy with  Syndicalism,  which  at  the  time  was  not  yet 
in  the  hands  of  questionable  ring-leaders.  In  fact, 
Socialism  is  nothing  else  than  the  vague — and  conse- 
quently despicable — belief  in  Progress  as  inseparable 
from  the  Future.  The  idea  that  evolution  is  invariably 
for  the  better  is  a  poor  invention  of  the  Encyclopaedists, 
which  the  no  less  poor  average  education  popular 
through  the  nineteenth  century  spread  among  the 
working-classes.  The  success  of  Socialism  was  entirely 
built  on  the  idea,  that  along  with  the  development  of 
science  must  come  a  development  of  civilization,  and, 
eventually,  the  millennium  promised  by  M.  Guesde 
and  M.  Jaures. 

At  the  bottom  of  this  notion  was  the  exaggerated 
esteem  of  knowledge  regarded  as  superior  to  moral 
worth,  and  the  identification  of  the  noble  idea  of 
civilization  with  mere  material  progress.  After  all, 
what  was  the  ideal  proposed  to  the  workers  by  their 
Socialist  leaders?  A  very  poor  one  indeed.  It  meant 
little  else  than  the  hope  of  little  work,  much  leisure, 
few  moral  obligations,  and,  in  default  of  an  eternal  life, 
which  could  not  exist,  and  was  only  a  dangerous  super- 
stition, a  scale  of  enjoyments  varying  from  a  somewhat 
low  materialism  to  the  refinement  of  the  artist.  To 
this  must  the  diffusion  of  lights  lead  some  day,  and  to 


198  The  Return  of  the  Light 

nothing  else;  and  that  it  could  lead  to  thus  much  soon 
appeared  very  doubtful  to  all  critical  minds. 

Over  against  this  philosophy  the  spirit  of  Syndicalism 
seemed  of  an  incredibly  nobler  order.  Whereas  the 
Socialist  ideal  was  nothing  else  than  individual  comfort, 
obtained  almost  passively  by  the  combination  of  easy 
political  methods  with  scientific  development,  the  Syn- 
dicalist ideal  was  worthy  of  the  name.  It  ignored  in- 
dividuals, and  was  exclusively  attentive  to  the  class;  it 
proposed  power  as  its  object,  but  it  was  power  for  an 
object  which  was  represented  as  inseparable  from  jus- 
tice; it  recommended  violence,  it  is  true,  but  how  re- 
freshing such  a  violence  was,  compared  with  the 
Socialists*  yearning  after  pleasure.  For  the  Syndical- 
ist's violence  was  disinterested;  it  was,  after  all,  a  form 
of  patriotism,  in  which  the  idea  of  class  was  substituted 
for  that  of  a  country;  there  was  nothing  demeaning  in 
it. 

On  the  whole,  M.  Sorel  was  attracted  by  the  Syndical- 
ists and  repelled  by  the  Socialists,  because  of  a  funda- 
mental preference  in  his  mind  for  moral  rather  than  for 
intellectual  distinction.  Civilization  to  him  meant 
gentlemanliness  rather  than  comfort.  Like  Loti,  he 
had  much  more  respect  for  an  Arabian  sheikh  than  for  a 
politician  with  all  the  varnish  of  a  course  at  the  Sor- 
bonne.  What  he  loved  in  the  Syndicalists,  as  in  the 
Jansenists,  was  the  soldierly  spirit  and  the  aloofness 
from  compromise.  One  felt  that  Syndicalism,  with 
more  results  and  less  courage,  would  be  indifferent  to 
him.  He  loved  heroism  and  cared  little  on  what  field 
heroism  happened  to  display  itself. 

It  is  strange  that  the  solitary  reflections  of  an  obscure 
engineer,  the  friend  of  an  obscure  clerk,  should  have 
reintegrated  into  the  French  consciousness  the  idea  of 


A  New  Mentality  Produced  199 

heroism  as  lovable  in  itself  which  was  for  centuries  one 
of  its  chief  elements.  Along  with  it  there  was  a  respect 
of  truth  and  a  disgust  for  mere  words,  a  tendency 
towards  practical  organization  as  opposed  to  ranting, 
which  were  the  very  reverse  of  the  politician's  inborn 
taste  for  appearances.  Wherever  we  find  a  criticism 
of  the  "philosophy  of  the  belly, "  or  of  the  "philosophy 
of  humbug,"  we  have  no  difficulty  in  tracing  it  to  the 
influence  of  M.  Georges  Sorel. 

The  manifestations  of  the  saner  intellect  of  France 
which  the  six  foregoing  chapters  recapitulate  had, 
naturally,  not  passed  unperceived.  It  was  impossible 
that  the  criticisms  of  such  men  as  Taine  and  Renan 
on  such  an  event  as  the  Revolution  should  not  have 
been  widely  commented  upon.  The  rise  of  literature 
from  Naturalism  to  Idealism  was  also  a  transformation 
of  which  even  the  man  in  the  street  must  be  more  or  less 
aware.  As  to  the  effects  of  provincialist  literature,  or  of 
the  theories  of  M.  Georges  Sorel,  I  realize  that  readers 
unaccustomed  to  the  deep  influence  which  ideas  wedded 
to  a  poetic  or  energetic  expression  have  in  France, 
will  be  doubtful  of  their  importance.  But  this  is  one  of 
the  points  about  which  familiar  experience  alone  en- 
ables us  to  make  up  our  minds.  The  fact  is,  that  if 
it  is  true  that  no  contemporary  writer  has  enjoyed  the 
position  of  Rousseau  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  it  is  also  true  that  literature  as  a  whole  is 
more  productive  of  effects  at  the  present  day  than  it 
was  at  any  other  period  of  French  history.  At  any 
rate,  we  see  clearly  that  the  ideas  which  between 
1880  and  1905  had  slowly  taken  possession,  some  of 
one  part  of  the  public,  some  of  another,  reappeared, 
united  and  systematized,  ready  for  daily  use  in  num- 


200  The  Return  of  the  Light 

berless  intellects  when  the  Tangier  shock  created  a 
powerful  demand  for  right  notions  ordained  towards 
right  actions. 

This,  and  not  merely  a  patriotic  emotion,  was  the 
wonderful  result  of  the  awakening  of  1905.  Ask  any- 
body worth  while  if  there  really  is  a  change  in  French 
mentality.  He  may  at  first  be  satisfied  with  mention- 
ing the  effects  of  the  new  spirit  to  which  I  shall  presently 
come,  but  if  you  help  him  to  analyse  his  impression  as  a 
Frenchman  is  always  inclined  to  analyse  it,  the  answer 
will  eventually  be:  Yes,  there  is  another  spirit  in 
France,  and  this  spirit  is  one  of  lucidity,  of  diffidence 
against  brilliant  formulae,  of  latent  sympathy  with  the 
national  tradition;  such  a  one,  in  a  word,  as  had  not 
been  alive  in  the  country  in  the  same  degree  since  the 
intellectual  intoxication  of  the  eighteenth  century. 


SECTION  III 

EVIDENCES  OF  THE  NEW  SPIRIT 

That  the  combination  of  roused  patriotism  with  the 
deep  intellectual  modifications  expounded  in  the  pre- 
ceding section  has  produced  tangible  effects  is  a  fact 
which  nobody  can  seriously  question.  I  shall  now  go 
into  the  examination  of  these  actual  manifestations, 
some  of  which  appear  instinctive,  while  the  others  will 
show  us  the  conscious  and  reasoned  aspect  of  the  new 
spirit. 

DIVISION  A. — INSTINCTIVE  MANIFESTATIONS  OF  THE  NEW 

SPIRIT 

I.    A  Patriotic  Attitude  Forced  even  on  Internationalists 

At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  the  out- 
spoken expression  of  patriotism  was  rare;  Dreyfusism 
was  voted  the  last  word  of  culture,  and  the  numberless 
people  with  whom  appearances  count  for  more  than 
principles  were  afraid  to  indulge  in  a  sentiment  which 
seemed  belated  and  inelegant.  The  universally  preva- 
lent certitude  of  peace  and  in  the  long  run  of  a  fusion  of 
all  nations  caused  patriotism  to  look  unpleasantly  like 
chauvinism,  and  the  consciousness  of  this  likeness  re- 
stricted all  but  very  reticent  manifestations. 

201 


202  The  Return  of  the  Light 

To-day  the  situation  seems  completely  reversed.  I 
need  not  revert  to  the  revulsion  caused  by  the  Tangier 
affair  in  men  capable  of  a  generous  emotion  and  equal 
to  the  conscience-examination  generally  invited  by  such 
an  emotion;  men  of  this  stamp  influence  rather  than 
exemplify  public  opinion.  Nobody  was  very  much 
surprised  to  see  M.  Clemenceau,  for  instance,  fly  the 
French  colours  just  at  the  right  moment  and  with  the 
proper  emphasis.  It  also  seemed  natural  that  a  man 
like  M.  Andre  Lefevre,  till  1905  a  Radical  Socialist, 
should  afterwards  become  pre-eminently  a  patriot.  The 
real  sign  of  the  times  was  the  transformation  of  less 
virile  and  more  receptive  intellects,  sensitive  to  the 
pressure  of  opinion  on  the  one  hand  and  easily  impressed 
on  the  other  by  the  conviction  of  minds  they  feel 
superior  to  their  own.  In  this  respect  nothing  can  rival 
the  Press  for  impressionability.  The  newspapers  are 
go-betweens  gifted  with  wonderful  tact  and  seldom 
running  the  risk  of  being  unpopular  or  that  of  appearing 
behindhand.  Now  the  contrast  between  the  tone  of  the 
papers  towards  1900  and  that  which  they  have  gradu- 
ally adopted  since  1905  cannot  be  exaggerated.  The 
ultra-civilized  way  of  approaching  international  ques- 
tions habitual  in  the  days  when  M.  Berthelot  was 
possible  as  a  Foreign  Minister  would  be  unbearable 
to-day  even  in  the  Lanterne.  What  a  difference  also 
between  the  M.  Berenger  we  knew  not  so  long  ago,  who 
advised  us  to  tear  the  flags  to  pieces,  and  the  present 
very  sensible  editor  of  U Action!  Between  the  former 
editors  of  Le  Rappel  and  M.  Edmond  du  Mesnil! 
Papers  of  this  shade  at  present  affect  a  supercilious 
national  sensitiveness,  and  frown  and  scowl  at  Germany 
on  the  least  pretence  with  the  best  chauvins  of  fifteen 
years  ago.    As  to  the  internationalist  press,  it  is  so  low 


Patriotism  on  Internationalists        203 

upon  the  horizon  that  only  professionals  know  where  to 
find  it. 

The  amorphous  politician  shows  the  same  transfor- 
mation. I  have  followed  with  as  much  interest  as 
amusement  the  subtle  though  quick  phosphorescences 
announcing  modifications  in  the  surroundings  of  young 
men  like  M.  Herriot,  the  Mayor  of  Lyons,  and  M. 
Paul-Boncour,  erewhile  Minister  of  Fine  Arts,  both 
perfect  samples  of  the  rising  politician  with  whom 
success  means  more  than  politics.  How  elegantly  they 
managed  to  become  patriots  while  retaining  the  touch 
of  Socialism  which  was  fashionable  when  they  first 
launched  in  politics!  How  cleverly  they  coloiu*  the 
somewhat  sickening  stuff  they  retail!  How  daintily 
these  consummate  young  actors  let  you  infer  by  almost 
unperceived  intonations  that  they  only  want  to  please 
you,  but  if  you  insist  on  being  pleased  with  outspoken- 
ness, they  are  ready  to  be  more  outspoken.  Indeed, 
such  barometers  are  infallible. 

But  more  obvious  indications  of  the  change  are  not 
wanting.  Is  it  not  remarkable  that  the  Socialist  group 
in  the  Chamber,  which  once  refused  to  discuss  any 
question  connected  with  the  budget  of  war,  is  now  ever- 
lastingly engaged  on  military  technicalities?  No  general 
wrote  or  said  so  much  about  the  driest  details  of  mo- 
bilization as  M.  Jaur^s.  A  stranger  might  hear  him  for 
an  hour  in  the  Chamber  without  suspecting  that  he 
was  not  a  nervous  patriot,  hypnotized  by  the  dangers 
arising  from  an  insufficient  frontier  line.  Ten  years 
ago  such  speeches  would  have  seemed  barbarous,  in- 
sulting for  neighbouring  nations,  and  recklessly  danger- 
ous for  peace.  To-day  they  are  merely  the  proper 
expression  of  a  feeling  which  it  would  be  shameful  to 
ignore. 


204  The  Return  of  the  Light 

The  fact  is,  that  whatever  may  have  been,  and  may 
still  be,  the  influence  of  M.  Maurice  Barres's  view  of 
patriotism  as  the  noblest  and  richest  of  our  emotions, 
there  is  another  more  powerful  cause  which  compels 
even  weaklings  to  declare  themselves  patriots.  No 
motive  acts  so  energetically  on  the  French  as  the  fear 
of  appearing  either  ridiculous  or  cowardly.  It  seemed 
ridiculous  before  1905  to  speak  of  the  possibilities  of  a 
war,  because  war  was  supposed  to  be  impossible,  and 
one  ran  the  risk,  by  thinking  the  contrary,  of  being 
regarded  either  as  a  braggart  or  an  uneducated  lout. 
To-day  the  ridicule  is  for  people — there  are  still  a  few 
left — simple  enough  to  believe,  as  Jules  Simon  did  in 
1867,  that  France  ought  only  to  give  the  example  of 
disarmament,  to  be  followed  by  the  rest  of  Europe,  and 
the  shame  would  be  for  those  who  might  appear  to 
dread  war  from  personal  considerations.  This  is  quite 
enough  to  change  the  whole  philosophy  of  war  with  the 
most  independent  spirits.  The  transformation  was 
visible  at  the  time  of  the  Agadir  incident  in  191 1;  the 
most  resolute  Syndicalists,  men  with  whom  interest 
counts  less  than  an  ideal,  no  matter  how  wrong  some- 
times, in  a  moment  forgot  the  pacifist  theories  they  had 
held  or  heard  for  years,  and  were  for  taking  up  arms 
immediately. 

What  is  only  an  attitude  with  neutrally  disposed 
individuals  is  a  much  deeper  feeling  with  the  bulk  of  the 
French  nation.  The  trend  of  politics  alone  during  the 
last  few  years  is  enough  to  prove  it.  Patriotism  has 
gradually  become  one  thing  with  the  military  precau- 
tions destined  to  safeguard  the  national  independence 
of  France,  but  these  precautions  having  been  first  sug- 
gested by  the  Cabinets  of  M.  Poincare,  M.  Briand,  and 
M.  Barthou,  the  political  enemies  of  these  gentlemen 


A  European  Point  of  View  205 

have  thought  it  a  good  platform  to  advocate,  on  the 
contrary,  an  alleviation  of  military  charges.  The  first 
impression  of  patriots,  therefore,  was  one  of  anxiety 
when  they  saw  Radicals  of  the  type  of  M.  Doumergue 
and  M.  Viviani  come  into  office.  Were  they  not  bound 
by  solemn  promises,  taken  at  a  plenary  convention  of 
their  party  at  Pau,  to  move  at  once  a  reduction  of  the 
military  service  to  a  period  inferior  to  three  years? 
Yet  nothing  of  the  kind  was  done  or  even  mooted. 
It  is  very  well  for  a  convention  of  politicians  to  devise 
a  useful  platform  before  an  election,  but  the  platform 
cannot  be  made  the  basis  of  a  serious  parliamentary 
action  without  the  risk  of  mortally  offending  the  coun- 
try. Nothing  shows  better  the  progress  made  by  France 
in  the  direction  of  efficient  patriotism  than  this  im- 
possibility for  demagogues  to  propose  to  the  country  a 
measure  likely  to  flatter  careless  tendencies,  but  at  the 
same  time  to  alarm  wide-awake  watchfulness. 

2.    Substitution  of  a  European  for  a  Party  Point  of  View 

This  is  only  another  aspect  of  patriotism.  When 
the  French  were  absorbed  in  the  welfare  of  the  universe, 
they  forgot  to  consider  whether  the  interests  of  man- 
kind might  not  be  in  conflict  with  those  of  their  own 
country.  Now  that  the  Dreyfusist  philosophy  has  been 
found  to  lead,  not  to  the  liberty  of  all,  but  to  a  great 
danger  of  thraldom  for  its  own  apostles,  the  situation 
is  reversed,  and — as  Vernon  Lee  wrote,  in  surprise  and 
disgust,  to  the  well-known  philosopher,  Paul  Desjardins 
— the  French  watch  the  movements  of  Europe  with  so 
much  attention,  that  they  neglect  all  their  former 
interests.  It  is  not  merely,  as  this  lady  said  in  the 
same  letter,  because  they  are  engrossed  by  the  thoughts 


2o6  The  Return  of  the  Light 

of  a  war,  some  fearing,  others  longing  for  it.  It  is 
rather  because  they  have  become  conscious  once  more 
of  political  realities,  and,  in  spite  of  six  generations  of 
Idealists  behind  them,  see  clearly  that  they  have  either 
to  pay  attention  to  trivial  details,  or  make  up  their 
minds  to  be  dupes  for  ever.  This  new  attitude  may 
be  occasionally  nervous,  sometimes  reluctant,  but  it  is 
practically  universal,  and  as  we  see  the  Socialists  take  a 
soldier's  interest  in  things  military,  we  also  hear  them 
frequently  discuss  economic  or  diplomatic  questions 
with  a  great  display  of  references  to  consular  reports. 
It  was  not  under  the  Combes  government  that  the 
settlement  of  a  minor  difficulty  with  the  customs  of  the 
United  States  could  have  been  given  so  much  attention 
as  it  received  in  the  summer  of  1 914.  I  noticed  in  a 
previous  chapter  the  space  which  even  popular  news- 
papers now  devote  to  such  technicalities  as  those 
concerning  the  Bagdad  railway  or  the  Persian  oil-fields. 
Many  indications  of  the  same  interest  could  be  found 
in  the  frequency  of  economic  investigations,  travels  for 
an  economic  purpose,  the  predominance  of  commercial 
geography,  or  of  questions  relative  to  international  law 
at  examinations,  etc.  This  kind  of  erudition,  com- 
bined with  the  general  patriotic  feeling,  has  gradually 
brought  about  an  attention  to  contingencies  which, 
only  a  few  years  ago,  we  were  inclined  to  regard  as 
eminently  English,  but  which  is  no  surprise  to  the 
student  of  French  diplomatic  history  from  the  days  of 
Louis  XII  till  those  of  Louis  XV,  and  even  of  Louis 
Philippe.  The  spread  of  French  civilization  then  was 
not  left  exclusively  to  the  contagion  of  French  culture. 
Whatever  may  be  the  ultimate  results  of  this  change 
of  outlook,  its  present  effects  are  certainly  good.  It 
makes  for  lucidity  and  decision,  two  qualities  which, 


A  European  Point  of  View  207 

until  the  national  mind  was  poisoned  by  humanitarian- 
ism,  were  looked  upon  as  characteristically  French. 
In  this  respect  it  is  only  one  side  of  the  steady  return  to 
tradition  noticeable  in  so  many  other  manifestations. 
But  one  immediate  consequence  of  it  ought  to  be  con- 
sidered with  special  attention:  I  mean  the  decrease 
of  party  spirit,  which  intelligent  patriotism  kills  as 
effectively  as  quinine  kills  fever. 

Here,  of  course,  we  find  the  stone  of  scandal  on  which 
many  good  Frenchmen  and  all  the  well-wishers  of 
France  abroad  are  sure  to  stumble.  Everybody  realizes 
that  devotion  to  the  great  interests  of  the  country  is 
irreconcilable  with  petty  divisions,  and  yet  such  divi- 
sions exist  in  France ;  and  every  now  and  then  they  still 
fill  the  papers  or  the  Parliamentary  proceedings  as 
they  used  to  do  towards  1900;  they  appeared  scandal- 
ously at  the  time  of  the  presidential  election,  at  the 
Pau  convention,  in  the  overthrow  of  M.  Barthou  and 
M.  Ribot,  in  the  sly  opposition  made  by  M.  Clemen- 
ceau,  M.  Caillaux,  and  M.  Jaures  to  President  Poincare, 
and  they  are  evident  whenever  the  least  pretence  makes 
it  possible  to  give  a  theological  tinge  to  any  discussion. 

This  is  true.  But  in  spite  of  its  visibility,  this 
anomaly  is  only  important  in  appearance,  and  because 
the  paradox  of  a  Chamber  with  an  unbalanced  power, 
as  I  have  said  before,  and  shall  have  other  occasions 
to  repeat,  must  magnify  all  that  relates  to  Parliamentary 
politics.  In  fact,  the  divisions  of  the  Chamber  are 
based  less  on  dissimilarities  of  standpoint  concerning 
important  issues  than  on  conflicting  personal  interests, 
and  they  result  in  talk  rather  than  in  tangible  action. 
The  danger  of  this  jockeying  would  be  evident,  did  it 
only  result  in  loss  of  time,  in  bewildering  the  cotmtry, 
and  puzzling  foreign  observers.     But  it  is  rather  the 


2o8  The  Return  of  the  Light 

consequence  of  a  bad  system  than  an  essential  evil, 
like  the  inferior  philosophy  which  once  caused  universal 
deterioration.  In  other  countries  political  divisions 
inevitably  lead  to  variations  of  policy.  It  is  not  dif- 
ficult to  imagine,  for  instance,  how  different  the  history 
of  England  in  recent  years  would  read  had  the  Con- 
servatives been  in  office.  But  in  France  we  saw  M. 
Viviani  carry  on  exactly  the  policy  of  M.  Barthou, 
which  as  a  deputy  he  constantly  opposed.  The  wider — 
what  we  might  call  the  European — point  of  view  forces 
itself  both  upon  the  country  and  its  Government,  and 
party  divisions  only  subsist  as  convenient  watchwords. 
This  appears  evident  in  the  attitude  adopted  by 
men  of  an  independent  spirit,  whatever  their  political 
opinion  may  be,  who  cannot  refrain  from  pointing  out 
what  strikes  them  as  a  ludicrous  paradox.  Very  few  are 
more  interesting  to  hear  than  M.  Marcel  Sembat. 
This  gentleman  is  one  of  a  few  wealthy  young  men  who, 
towards  1898,  when  Socialism  was  young  and  elegant, 
could  not  resist  the  attraction  of  the  new  doctrine,  and 
devoted  their  millions  to  the  cause  of  M.  Jaures.  M. 
Sembat  seldom  influences  the  Chamber ;  he  is  too  gay, 
too  sarcastic,  too  sceptical  about  men,  whether  friends 
or  foes,  too  detached  from  the  effect  his  speeches  might 
produce,  and  all  this  gives  him  an  appearance  of  super- 
ficiality which  warrants  resistance  on  the  part  of 
deputies  undoubtedly  his  inferiors,  but  who  think  them- 
selves more  serious  because  they  are  less  witty.  Yet 
M.  Sembat  is  none  the  less  one  of  the  clearest  intellects 
there  are  in  Parliament  or  in  the  Press,  and  although 
he  never  influences  a  vote,  all  that  he  says  or  writes 
is  noticed  and  commented  on.  Now  he  is  convinced 
that  peace  is  better  than  war,  and  that  progress  can  be 
conceived  apart  from  territorial  expansion — that  is  to 


A  European  Point  of  View  209 

say,  he  thinks  that  one  day  may  come  when  Socialist 
humanitarianism  will  be  sufficiently  spread  in  Europe 
to  serve  as  a  basis  for  international  relations.  But 
whereas  Dreyfusist  politicians  would  act  as  if  this  state 
of  affairs  already  existed,  M.  Sembat  sees  clearly  that 
it  is  only  a  very  remote  hope,  and  that,  meanwhile,  war, 
whether  offensive  or  defensive,  must  be  a  constant 
consideration  in  modern  politics.  Now,  while  French- 
men, grown  up  with  the  blinkers  of  party  spirit  tiniv^r- 
sal  before  1905,  would  look  upon  the  persistence  of  the 
Republican  regime  as  a  dogma  to  which  even  the  ex- 
istence of  the  country  ought  to  be  made  subservient, 
M.  Sembat  thinks,  as  practically  every  sensible  person 
at  present  does,  that  the  question  of  the  regime  is  a 
minor  one  in  comparison  with  that  of  the  national 
independence.  In  this  state  of  mind  he  was  not  afraid 
to  publish  in  the  summer  of  19 13  a  volume  defiantly 
entitled,  Faites  un  Roi,  sinon  faites  la  Paix.  Evidently 
he  believed  that  the  Republic  has  for  its  chief  object 
the  maintenance  of  peace,  but  he  also  realized  that 
peace  or  war  was  not  the  free  choice  of  European 
nations  at  the  present  day,  and  he  sacrificed  the  whole 
fabric  of  his  party  to  the  exigencies  of  a  higher  policy 
than  that  of  parliamentary  groups.  The  book  may  not 
have  promoted  royalist  propagandism  as  much  as 
royalist  writers  imagined,  but  it  was  a  powerful  demon- 
stration of  the  complete  change  in  outlook  brought 
about  by  the  danger  revealed  in  1905  and  19 10,  and  as 
such  its  importance  was  considerable ;  party  as  opposed 
to  patriotism,  the  Republic  itself  as  placed  over  against 
France,  are  now  things  of  a  past,  when  the  French  lived 
like  Leibnitz's  monad,  without  any  outside  windows. 

The  substitution  of  a  European  for  a  mere  political 
standpoint  is  so  deadly  for  petty  considerations  that 
14 


210  The  Return  of  the  Light 

we  have  seen  it  several  times  replace  even  religious 
questions  in  their  true  perspective  and  show  that  blind 
anti-clericalism  may  be  as  pernicious  for  France  as 
anti-patriotism  itself.  This  is  no  small  achievement, 
for  the  idea  of  the  Roman  tyranny,  with  its  escort  of 
intellectual  oppression  and  universal  regress,  is  a  long- 
lived  bugbear.  Two  men  who  were  never  suspected  of 
an  exaggerated  partiality  for  religion,  M.  Leygues  and 
M.  Frangois  Deloncle — the  latter  of  whom  especially 
was  long  known  as  an  active  Freemason — ^have  been 
able  on  various  occasions  to  point  out  to  the  Chamber 
consequences  of  the  complete  separation  from  Rome 
which  exposed  its  absurdity.  The  protectorate  of  Catho- 
lic missions  which  made  the  presence  of  the  French  flag 
a  matter  of  course  wherever  there  were  Catholics  in  the 
East,  was  virtually  abolished  by  the  Separation  Law, 
which  its  authors  meant  as  a  declaration  of  indifference 
to  all  religions,  and  since  the  enforcement  of  that  law 
it  has  quietly  passed  over,  according  to  circumstances, 
to  Italy  or  Germany.  In  the  same  way,  the  law  against 
religious  orders  was  not  intended  for  religious  estab- 
lishments— according  to  Gambetta's  principle  that  anti- 
clericalism  is  a  bad  export — ^but  it  was  inevitable  that  if 
orders  should  be  suppressed  at  home  their  numbers 
would  promptly  decrease  abroad.  These  alternatives 
were  dwelt  upon  at  considerable  length  by  M.  Leygues 
and  M.  Deloncle  without  any  show  on  the  part  of  the 
Chamber  of  the  childish  sensitiveness  of  yore,  and  for 
the  first  time  since  the  suppression  of  the  Embassy  to 
the  Vatican,  a  religious  question  could  be  discussed 
exclusively  from  the  national  point  of  view.  I  am 
aware  that  after  that  date  the  Government  suppressed 
a  number  of  religious  establishments  which  had  been 
tolerated  since  1901,  but  this  is  only  another  instance 


Anachronism  of  So-Called  Idealism    211 

of  the  opposition  between  the  spirit  of  the  country  and 
the  action  of  politicians.  The  Government  suppresses 
convents  to  reassure  the  Radical  party  on  its  tottering 
condition  by  creating  in  them  the  illusion  that  nothing 
is  changed,  and  it  will  secretly  support  CathoHc  French 
schools  at  Beyrout  or  Jerusalem. 

3.    Anachronism  of  So-called  Idealist  Manifestations 

Some  people  are  impervious  to  all  the  reasons  they 
might  have  to  modify  either  their  notions  or  their  at- 
titude. They  are  not  always  unintelligent ;  they  may 
be  only  obstinate — sometimes  with  great  gentleness — 
or  inattentive  and  dreamy  or  nervously  enthusiastic. 
Almost  in  every  case  it  is  not  difficult  to  account  for 
their  indifference  to  what  is  going  on  in  the  world  by 
subtle  interests  blinding  them  to  the  logic  of  a  situation. 
Whatever  may  be  the  reasons  of  their  behaviour,  it  is 
inevitable  that  they  should  be  few,  that  their  influence 
should  be  small,  and  that  a  touch  of  perplexing  singu- 
larity should  be  attached  to  what  they  say  or  do. 

This  is  the  case  with  the  rare  groups  of  men  one  may 
still  find,  who  have  hardly  modified  their  line  since  the 
Dreyfus  ebullition.  Such  periodicals  as  Les  Droits  de 
VHommej  edited  by  the  son  of  Pdre  Loyson,  Les 
Documents  du  ProgreSj  Le  Courrier  Europeen,  Les 
Cahiers  d'Aujourd'hui,  continue  to  think  of  France  as 
pre-eminently  the  intellectual  laboratory  of  the  imi- 
verse;  but  how  imimportant  they  have  become  since 
the  not  very  long  past  days  when  their  columns  were 
the  store-rooms  of  advanced  thought!  What  a  feeling 
of  sameness  and  staleness  we  experience  whenever  we 
have  an  occasion  to  look  into  them!  How  antiquated 
their  effort  to  appear  fresh  and  unconventional  seems 


212  The  Return  of  the  Light 

to  us,  wedded  as  it  almost  invariably  is  with  artistic 
or  literary  formulae  of  more  than  impressionistic  so- 
phistication and  about  which  we  have  long  made  up  our 
minds.  We  know  quite  well  that  the  restricted  public 
which  retains  its  belief  in  those  performances  may 
think  itself  distinguished,  but  rather  deserves  to  be 
called  eccentric.  If  one  were  to  deduct  from  the 
subscription  lists  of  these  periodicals  the  names  of 
foreign  artists  or  foreign  nondescripts,  who  will  mistake 
the  exceptional  for  the  rare,  of  the  Jews  who  cater  for 
them,  of  the  Bohemians  who  imagine  or  pretend  they 
take  an  interest  in  novelties,  there  would  be  a  very 
small  number  of  real  natives  left.  French  taste  and 
French  conviction  have  been  hopelessly  alienated  from 
humanitarianism  since  it  turned  out  to  be  profitable 
to  everyone  except  France.  In  the  last  months  of 
1 91 3,  two  new  magazines  appeared,  one  of  which,  called 
MessidoYy  purported  to  be  resolutely  idealistic,  and  the 
other,  called  La  Renaissance,  stated  its  object  to  be  all 
that  can  unite  the  French ;  the  difference  of  welcome  in 
favour  of  the  latter  on  the  mere  reading  of  advertise- 
ments was  striking,  in  spite  of  brilHant  and  reassuring 
names  on  the  staff  of  Messidor, 

All  that  recalls  the  dangerous  vagueness  or  the 
gullible  broad-mindedness  of  the  years  1898- 1905  has 
become  ridiculous  or  repellent ;  a  Franco-German  league, 
the  Berne  conference  for  peace,  a  committee  for  the 
erection  of  a  statue  to  Robespierre,  are  all  equally 
mocked  or  equally  despised,  and  the  general  tendency 
is  to  suspect  foreign  influences  in  them. 

One  fact  can  help  the  reader  in  measuring  how  far  the 
French  have  progressed  in  the  direction  of  lucidity  and 
in  antipathy  against  false  positions;  it  is  the  distance 
between  the  literary  and  the  patriotic  estimation  that 


Distrust  of  Parliament  213 

are  made  of  two  such  men  as  M.  Romain  RoUand,  and, 
above  all,  M.  Anatole  France.  Jean-Christophe  would 
undoubtedly  be  a  popular  masterpiece  if  its  atmosphere 
were  not  such  as  to  invite  at  once  a  German  translation. 
In  spite  of  the  author's  resolute  statement  that  "he 
has  annexed  Germany, "  the  readers  will  believe  that  he 
simply  felt  the  fascination  which  Michelet  had  expe- 
rienced before  him  and  been  annexed  himself.  As  to  M. 
Anatole  France,  he  has  lived  long  enough  to  become  a 
sort  of  conundrum.  It  is  disconcerting  to  find  that  the 
same  man  may  have  distilled  the  wisdom  there  is  in 
such  books  as  the  Bergeret  volumes  or  Les  Dieux  ont 
Soify  and  ranted  in  a  turgid  manner  at  Socialist  meet- 
ings; that  a  man  who  intellectually  is  so  unmistakably 
French  should  put  his  name  to  anti-militarist  posters 
or  prefix  it  with  Salut  et  fraternite.  The  writer  who 
undoubtedly  represented  in  its  highest  perfection  the 
charming  dilettantism  of  1890,  the  flower  of  French 
perversion,  when  this  perversion  was  not  supposed  to  be 
dangerous,  is  only  at  the  present  day  really  popular 
abroad.  In  his  own  country,  strange  as  it  may  sound, 
M.  Anatole  France  is  a  fossil. 

4.    Increased  Distrust  of  Parliamentary  Action 

The  Chamber  which,  after  long  swaggering  and 
hectoring,  had  finally  to  confess  its  helplessness  in  the 
settlement  of  the  difficulties  with  Germany,  and  later 
in  the  repression  of  Syndicalist  disturbances,  and  the 
Chamber — its  immediate  successor — which  voted  the 
raising  of  the  deputies'  salary,  were  regarded  with 
undisguised  contempt.  Since  then,  the  Chamber  which 
went  out  in  1914  did  two  things  which  somewhat 
reconciled  the  country  to  it,  and  created  a  better  feel- 


214  The  Return  of  the  Light 

ing:  it  passed  the  Proportional  Representation  Bill, 
which  is  a  moral  measure,  and  the  Three- Year  Service 
Bill,  which  was  a  necessity  indeed,  but  could  not  be 
done  without  something  like  courage.  The  Chamber 
returned  in  May,  1914,  has  ratified  the  Three- Year 
Service  Law,  and  it  contains  a  fair  proportion  of  deputies 
not  unwilling  to  consider  a  reform  of  the  Constitution, 
which  would  inevitably  result  in  a  diminution  of  the 
Chamber  itself.  This  again  looks  like  conscientiousness. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  as  if  Parliament  stood  better 
chances  in  public  opinion  than  it  has  had  for  many 
years. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Chamber  elected  in  1914 
is  in  the  power  of  the  Radicals,  as  the  rapid  doom  of  the 
Ribot  Government  proved  without  any  question,  and 
what  are  the  Radicals  in  public  estimation?  First  of 
all,  the  enemies  of  M.  Poincare,  who,  at  the  time  of  his 
election  at  least,  represented  the  best  French  tendencies; 
then  the  liars  who  declared  themselves  against  the 
Three- Year  Law  at  the  Pau  convention,  and  dare  not 
abide  by  their  own  decision;  finally  the  inquisitors  into 
private  fortunes  who  have  abetted  the  Socialists  in  the 
drawing  up  of  the  Income  Tax  Law. 

All  this,  joined  to  the  consciousness,  every  four  years 
strengthened,  that  the  elections  are  fundamentally 
insincere  and  invariably  unintelligible,  results  in  a 
feeling  of  deep  mistrust  which  the  recent  importance 
taken  by  the  Senate  only  increases.  Until  the  presiden- 
tial election  of  1913,  the  Senate  brought  on  itself  less 
of  the  animadversion  gathering  around  the  Chamber. 
The  Upper  Assembly  lived  in  comparative  obscurity 
and  humility,  and  its  dealings  seemed  hardly  public. 
So  while  there  was  no  sympathy  for  it,  there  was  none 
of    the   antipathy   which   attached   to    the   ravenous 


Syndicalism  Checked  215 

Chamber.  This  was  changed  in  the  spring  of  1913, 
when  the  Senate  did  its  best  for  the  nonentity  Pams 
against  M.  Poincare,  at  a  time  when  the  country  was 
pining  for  a  man.  Since  then  the  impression  has  been 
that  ParHament  is  less  than  ever  the  representation  of 
the  country,  that  a  few  influential  persons  there  as 
everywhere  else  pull  wires  and  regulate  the  whole  loose 
machinery,  and  that  a  subtle  hypocrisy  enables  the 
Chamber  to  pretend  to  do  things  which  it  knows  the 
Senate  will  undo.  So  the  prevalent  feeling  now,  as  in 
1905,  is  one  of  hesitation  and  mistrust  of  Parliament, 
with  a  greater  consciousness  of  the  impossibility  of  doing 
anything  against  it. 

Is  not  this  disposition  irreconcilable  with  the  return 
of  lucidity  and  energy  which  I  regard  as  the  fortunate 
consequence  of  the  Tangier  conversion?  Not  at  all;  it 
is  only  the  uncomfortable  sensation  that  there  is  some- 
thing hopelessly  wrong  in  the  Constitution.  Under- 
neath this  sensation  there  is  the  passionate  longing  for 
a  change,  which,  in  the  first  decade  following  1875, 
would  have  been  unthinkable,  and  the  possibility  of  a 
sudden  overthrow  to  which  I  shall  revert  in  the  third 
part  of  this  volume.  The  country  can  apparently  do 
nothing  against  its  half -unconscious  oppressors  beyond 
wishing  for  their  disappearance,  but  such  a  wish  is  a 
force  in  itself. 

5.    Syndicalism  Reduced  to  its  True  Proportions 

In  the  early  years  of  the  present  century,  S3mdicalism 
appeared  formidable.  The  trade  unions,  advised  by 
Femand  Pelloutier,  had  taken  advantage  of  the  law  of 
1901  on  Associations,  not  only  to  have  their  individual 
existence  legally  recognized,  but  to  lay  the  foundations 


2i6  The  Return  of  the  Light 

of  the  vast  federation  known  as  the  General  Labour 
Confederacy.  It  seemed  inevitable  that  a  poptdar  move- 
ment, revolutionary  in  its  object,  no  doubt,  but  appar- 
ently justified  by  contingencies,  and  not  illegal,  should 
attract  all  the  energies  of  the  working-classes  and  spread 
to  all  the  corporations.  It  seemed  almost  as  certain  that 
the  Government  of  those  days,  resting  largely  on  the 
Socialist  vote,  and  Socialism  not  appearing  as  yet 
clearly  distinguishable  from  Syndicalism,  the  number 
of  Socialist  deputies  must  promptly  become  large 
enough  to  make  a  revolution  a  matter  of  course.  The 
postmen's  and  electricians'  strikes,  on  the  other  hand, 
showed  how  powerful  the  Bourse  du  Travail  had  already 
become,  and  the  negotiating  attitude  of  M.  Clemenceau 
and  M.  Briand,  then  Prime  Ministers,  meant  the 
consciousness  of  impotence.  So  Syndicalism  was  the 
spectre  before  which  everybody  trembled. 
>  But  here,  too,  the  Tangier,  and  especially  the  Agadir, 
emotion  brought  a  change.  Syndicalism  did  not  mean 
only  a  corporate  movement;  it  amounted  to  anti- 
patriotism  and  anti-militarism.  It  seemed  a  certainty 
that  in  case  of  a  war  the  Syndicates  would  obey  the 
directions  all  ready  at  the  Bourse  du  Travail,  and  oppose 
the  mobilization.  Now,  after  Agadir  it  turned  out  that 
the  workers,  even  the  Syndicalists,  were,  in  an  over- 
whelming majority,  prepared  to  follow  their  military, 
rather  than  their  labour  leaders.  A  deeper  reaction 
could  not  but  follow,  and  it  put  the  workmen  on  their 
guard  against  ring-leaders  who,  according  to  the  recent 
avowals  of  one  of  them,  Pataud,  were  only  too  inclined 
to  go  over  to  the  bourgeois,  just  like  the  Socialists.  As 
this  coincided  with  the  appearance  of  stronger  govern- 
ments made  necessary  by  the  common  danger,  it  soon 
appeared  that  the  General  Labour  Confederacy  had 


A  Higher  Moral  Standard  217 

been  more  influential  through  the  terror  it  inspired  than 
through  its  real  position,  which,  moreover,  was  now 
demonstrated  to  be  decidedly  illegal.  Finally,  in  19 13, 
anti-militarist  propagandism  having  once  more  been 
denounced  as  coming  from  the  Bourse  du  Travail* 
M.  Barthou  had  the  building  searched,  confiscated 
documents,  and  imprisoned  several  of  the  chief  leaders, 
without  raising  any  serious  protest.  Ten  years  before 
such  an  action  would  have  been  madness,  to-day  it 
appears  common  good  sense. 

As  a  conclusion,  the  Syndicalist  movement  seems  at 
present  less  revolutionary  in  France  than  it  is  in  Eng- 
land, or  in  America,  and  one  terrible  ghost  has  been 
laid.  In  its  place  two  very  different  fears — the  anxiety 
over  German  progress  and  discomfort  at  the  mis- 
management of  the  Senate  and  Chamber — have  risen, 
and  as  they  are  founded  on  circumstances  which  can  be 
fought  and  modified  with  much  less  difficulty,  they  are 
far  less  depressing. 

6.    A  Higher  Moral  Standard  Forced  on  the  Public  Spirit 

The  reader,  in  several  of  the  following  chapters — 
dealing  with  the  younger  generation,  with  the  influence 
of  the  Church,  and  with  contemporary  literature — ^will 
find  various  indications  of  a  return  of  the  French  to 
traditional  morals,  and  even  to  religion  as  the  most 
powerful  element  in  the  morality  of  a  nation.  But  it 
would  be  misleading  not  to  emphasize  a  transformation 
which,  in  spite  of  some  hesitancy,  is  characteristic  of 
the  spirit  I  am  describing. 

A  moral  lowering  was  inseparable  from  the  intellec- 
tual deterioration  which  we  have  examined  in  the  first 
part  of  this  volume.    Scepticism  invariably  results  first 


21 8  The  Return  of  the  Light 

of  all  in  elegant,  and  sooner  or  later  in  coarse  cynicism. 
The  passage  from  eighteenth-century  persiflage  to  Revo- 
lutionary grossness  was  exactly  repeated  in  the  passage 
from  the  comfortable  negations  of  the  Second  Empire 
to  the  moral  vulgarity  of  the  Third  Republic. 

For  years  this  admixture  of  intellectual  indifference 
with  moral  looseness  was  in  all  Europe  a  scandal  not 
only  to  goodness,  which  was  natural,  but  also  to  igno- 
rance or  hypocrisy,  which  made  France  seem  to  be  in  a 
worse  condition  than  she  was  in  reality.  The  French 
never  struck  careful  observers  as  morally  inferior  to 
most  European  nations,  but  they  knew  no  convention- 
ality, no  outward  restraint,  and,  as  a  consequence,  they 
boldly  denied  the  metaphysical  basis  of  morals,  paraded 
cynicism,  professed  themselves  worse  than  they  were 
when  they  happened  to  be  bad,  and  smiled  at  their  own 
goodness  when  they  happened  to  be  good.  In  short, 
they  were  the  victims  of  low  doctrines,  no  doubt,  but 
above  all,  of  a  low  tone. 

To-day  this  style  has  so  entirely  ceased  to  be  fashion- 
able that  it  looks  provincial  even  in  the  country,  and 
the  French  show  themselves  sincere  admirers  of  all 
moral  elevation.  They  are  not  very  good  preachers  as 
yet,  because  their  education  leaves  them  convinced 
that  preaching  only  belongs  to  deep  religiousness,  and 
because  the  national  thoroughness  prevents  them  from 
attempting  what  they  feel  they  can  do  only  in  part. 
But  wherever  they  see  a  good  doctrine  or  a  good 
example  they  recognize  it,  and  they  do  their  best  to 
extirpate  a  few  shortcomings  which  used  to  give  special 
offence.  Every  newspaper  speaks  against  depopulation 
and  advocates  legal  action  against  its  apostles;  the 
long-tolerated  indulgence  of  the  juries  for  crimes 
passionnels  is  so  frequently  inveighed  against  that  in 


A  Higher  Moral  Standard  219 

the  long  run  the  protest  must  create  a  wholesome 
severity;  even  the  looseness  which  attracts  so  many 
foreigners  to  a  few  Parisian  theatres  has  lost  its  de- 
fenders; the  so-called  artistic  excuses  which  used  to  be 
put  forward  to  keep  up  certain  exhibitions  are  never 
heard  with  so  much  sarcastic  scepticism  as  when  they 
come  from  apparently  convinced  people.  The  censor- 
ship has  been  abolished,  but  the  very  papers  that  used 
to  mock  and  rally  it,  set  the  police  in  motion  to  do  the 
work  it  once  did  so  badly,  whenever  there  is  a  serious 
reason  for  it. 

We  are  still  far  from  a  healthy  degree  of  austerity, 
without  which  nations  fall  easy  preys  to  moral  diseases; 
the  whole  atmosphere  emanating  from  commercial  or 
industrial  as  well  as  literary  activity,  that  which  trans- 
pires through  conversations,  and  is  imderstood  imder 
every  printed  statement,  is  a  wish  for  easy,  independent 
living,  with  enough  money  to  make  to-day  enjoyable 
and  to-morrow  secure.  But  if  people  thus  stand  for  the 
vie  large,  they  have  ceased  to  stand  for  the  vie  libre. 
Loose  principles  no  longer  seem  inevitably  associated 
with  the  possession  of  fortune;  the  complete  failiu-e  of 
Le  Phalene,  the  play  of  M.  Bataille,  conceived  in  an 
atmosphere  undoubtedly  superannuated,  was  a  proof 
of  this. 

As  to  the  reasons,  they  are  many  and  complex. 
But  the  two  causes  which  we  discover  at  the  end  of  all 
the  mental  avenues  we  happen  to  enter  in  this  investiga- 
tion are  visible  here  as  everywhere  else.  In  the  first 
place,  a  better  philosophy,  based  on  a  more  thorough 
criticism  of  principles  once  welcomed  as  scientific,  has 
restored  a  metaphysical  value  to  the  moral  instincts 
of  mankind,  and,  in  the  second  place,  a  sane  pragma- 
tism arising  from  the  necesvsity  of  giving  food  and 


220  The  Return  of  the  Light 

support  to  collective  as  well  as  to  individual  courage, 
compels  the  man  who  champions  good  citizenship  to 
promote  at  the  same  time  a  moral  creed  without  which 
self-denial  is  impossible  or  transient.  To  this  extent 
can  we  say  that  the  national  awakening  has  produced 
ethical  revival. 

7.    Anomaly  of  the  Stage  Considered 

It  has  been  too  ready  an  assumption  with  some 
writers  that  life  and  the  drama  are  parallel,  and  that 
the  morality  of  the  modem  world  can  be  inferred  from 
that  of  its  theatre.  Printed  instances  are  numerous. 
J.  J.  Weiss,  an  admirable  dramatic  critic,  too  much 
forgotten  already,  though  he  was  at  his  zenith  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  has  entitled  one  of  his  volumes  Le  Thedtre 
et  les  Mceurs;  another  volume  by  a  clever  and  witty 
though  rather  superficial  barrister,  M.  de  Saint- Auban, 
is  called  Uldee  Sociale  au  Thedtre;  another,  written  by 
M.  Frangois  Veuillot,  almost  exclusively  from  the 
religious  standpoint  and  very  sound  in  many  ways, 
approaches  dramatists  as  Les  PrSdicateurs  de  la  Schne, 
All  these  works  assume  more  or  less  explicitly  that  a 
modem  play  being  a  slice  of  life,  if  you  bring  enough 
of  these  slices  together  you  will  have  a  very  nearly 
complete  image  of  modem  life,  and  if  you  disengage 
their  points  of  view,  you  will  obtain  something  like  the 
modem  man's  philosophy. 

Nothing  is  apparently  so  like  daily  reality  as  the 
play;  the  language  we  hear  in  the  theatre  is  our  common 
slang  in  all  its  stages  of  refinement  or  coarseness;  the 
ideas,  the  prejudices,  the  manners  of  theatrical  charac- 
ters must  be  like  those  of  the  people  we  meet  in  real 
houses,  or  we  damn  the  play  as  turgid  or  sentimental. 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  221 

We  resent  any  intrusion  of  the  dramatist  into  the 
actions  and  utterances  of  his  creations,  and  we  imagine 
that  the  numberless  histrionic  attempts  which  year 
after  year  succeed  one  another  must  exhaust  the  situa- 
tions possible  to  our  contemporaries.  Curiously  enough, 
we  conceive  no  mistrust  against  the  veracity  of  play- 
wrights from  their  occasional  indulgence  in  the  apo- 
logues called  pieces  d  theses^  or  plays  with  a  purpose. 
Their  frequent  awkwardness  gives  us  no  misgivings, 
and  their  confidence,  that  of  the  prefaces  with  which 
they  are  generally  published,  that  of  the  critics  who 
discuss  them  gravely  in  the  newspapers,  only  confirms 
us  in  the  belief  that  the  stage  mirrors  the  world.  It  is 
only  when  we  look  attentively  into  some  considerable 
portion  of  the  dramatic  production  that  we  find  out  that 
plays  are  hardly  ever  written  for  our  enlightenment, 
but  merely  for  our  amusement ;  that  their  outlook  is  as 
restricted  as  that  of  the  short  stories  in  the  magazines; 
that  they  are  beset  on  all  sides  with  conventionalities 
and  cramped  by  the  narrowness  of  the  stage;  that 
the  so-called  theses  are  mostly  another  effort  to  give 
the  plays  actualite;  the  philosophical  disquisitions  of  the 
critics  on  their  import  inane  verbosity  or  sheer  humbug, 
and  the  so-called  ex-professo  books  on  the  ethics  of 
the  stage  strings  of  forgotten  articles  reprinted  under 
fallacious  titles.  Then  you  realize  that  you  would  be 
more  than  imprudent  to  seek  the  standard  of  a  nation's 
morality  exclusively  or  even  principally  in  its  dramatic 
literature,  and  you  modestly  limit  yourself  to  taking 
stock  of  what  the  play  really  holds  of  current  ideas  and 
modem  situations,  without  hoping  to  rival  in  any  way 
a  judicious  collection  of  faits-divers  from  the  penny 
newspapers.  There  are  cartloads  of  mere  literature 
in  these  professedly  objective  productions.    The  moral 


222  The  Return  of  the  Light 

influence  of  the  old  comedy  was  summed  up  in  the 
Latin  phrase:  Castigat  ridendo  mores ^  and  that  of  the 
tragedy  in  the  notion  which  some  Goethean  heroine 
had  formed  to  herself  of  a  good  romance — viz.,  a  book 
with  characters  one  would  like  to  resemble.  To-day 
our  playwrights  want  to  be  regarded  as  philosophers 
and  directors  of  conscience.  I  once  saw  with  no  little 
surprise  a  Latin  volume  of  Casuistry  in  the  hands  of  a 
young  friend  of  mine.  *'Are  you  tormented  in  your 
soul.'*'*  I  asked.  "No,"  replied  he,  "I  am  looking  for  a 
dramatic  theme.  **  But  before  fifteen  years  are  over  he 
may  give  moral  consultations  to  deferential  journalists. 
He  will  be  in  the  right  of  it;  playwrights  sit  side  by 
side  with  jurists  in  the  committees  for  marriage  reforms. 
They  have  taken  the  place  of  bishops  in  the  councils 
of  the  commonwealth,  as  physicians  replace  the  con- 
fessors in  family  consultations.  Alexandre  Dumas, 
junior,  with  just  a  mite  of  his  father's  genius,  was  the 
first  Frenchman  who  played  this  r61e  with  perfect 
seriousness.  He  wrote  plays  which  were  technically 
good  and  morally  daring — that  is  to  say,  doubtful;  he 
appended  to  them  prefaces  which  were  generally  much 
better  than  the  plays;  when,  in  his  preface  to  VEtran- 
ghre,  in  1879,  he  stood  as  a  conservative  against  the 
radicalism  of  Zola,  his  ethics  got  the  credit  of  his 
literature,  and  he  was  well-nigh  looked  upon  as  a 
Father  of  the  Church. 

Some  ten  years  later  the  French  discovered  Ibsen, 
and  their  pleasure  in  the  discovery  doubled  their 
belief  in  the  play  with  a  far-reaching  moral  import. 
Inferior  snobbism  immediately  disported  itself  in  sym- 
bolism, while  the  superior  kind  resulted  in  Maeter- 
linckian  adaptations.  But  the  credit  of  the  theatrical 
moralists  became  greater  and  greater,  and  several  of  the 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  223 

rising  young  playwrights  did  not  take  the  trouble  to 
conceal  their  ambitions,  and  boldly  began  to  preach  at 
once. 

M.  Hervieu  is  the  least  sophisticated  of  all.  His 
dramas  are  simply  apologies  or  demonstrations,  and  he 
does  not  mind  if  the  rough  side  of  his  tapestry  is  as 
visible  as  the  other.  In  order  to  show  that  the  old 
adage,  Verba  volant,  is  right  only  when  the  words  are 
kind  or  at  least  indifferent,  he  writes  Les  Paroles 
Restent,  a  real  charade,  in  which  we  see  a  woman  ruined 
by  an  imprudent  speech  of  a  man  who  afterwards  does 
all  he  can,  but  in  vain,  to  redeem  his  inconsiderateness- 
The  title  of  the  play  is  quite  superfluous;  the  least 
attentive  spectator  would  supply  it  at  a  second's  notice 
if  it  were  missing.  M.  Hervieu  is  clearness  itself.  He 
is  a  great  feminist,  and  looks  upon  our  Code  as  bar- 
barously partial  for  the  men.  He  just  picks  up  some 
text  in  it  and  embodies  it  in  a  dramatic  action  destined 
to  show  its  absurdity.  In  Les  Tenailles  it  will  be  the 
article  which  empowers  the  husband  to  conduct  the 
education  of  his  children.  We  shall  see  a  man  and 
woman  fighting  over  a  delicate  boy  whom  the  husband 
wants  to  send  to  school  while  his  consort  refuses.  Such 
scenes  happen  every  day,  and  Captain  Marryat  has 
painted  one  in  an  immortal  manner  in  the  first  pages  of 
Mr.  Midshipman  Easy  without  troubling  his  head  about 
any  sort  of  philosophy.  But  M.  Hervieu  makes  his  case 
highly  dramatic  by  letting  us  know  that  the  husband 
is  not  the  father  of  his  son,  and  by  turning  in  conse- 
quence the  wife  into  a  martyr  at  once.  In  La  Lot  de 
V Homme  it  is  another  aspect  of  the  same  situation. 
An  exquisite  woman,  Madame  de  Raguais  has  to  live 
with  her  husband,  a  low  creature,  because  she  cannot 
legally  establish  his  unworthiness — of  which,  however, 


224  The  Return  of  the  Light 

she  is  sure — and  she  must  bear  to  see  her  daughter 
marry  the  son  of  her  husband's  mistress  because  the 
wretch  takes  the  side  of  the  impassioned  girl. 

When  you  read  a  drama  of  M.  Hervieu's  you  see  both 
the  tragic  action  and  the  legal  demonstration  proceed 
together  step  after  step  with  infallible  and  geometrical 
precision,  and  you  realize  that,  whatever  legal  possibil- 
ity you  might  give  to  M.  Hervieu  to  treat,  he  would  in 
a  minute  carry  it  on  to  the  stage  with  counts  and  coun- 
tesses instead  of  the  Caiuses  and  Titiuses  of  the  old 
ethical  treatises.  But  are  we  convinced  by  his  precise 
machinery?  Not  at  all.  We  leave  the  theatre  with  our 
old  impression  that  everything  is  not  right  here  below, 
far  from  it,  but  it  is  wise  after  all  that  the  head  of  a 
family  should  be  entitled,  at  least  in  theory,  to  final 
decisions  on  serious  issues.  The  drama  lives  on  in- 
dividual cases,  laws  are  just  the  reverse. 

The  method  of  M.  Brieux  is  less  rigid  than  that  of 
M.  Hervieu;  we  feel  less  while  seeing  his  plays  that  we 
are  in  the  hands  of  a  school  teacher  who  will  not  let  us 
go  until  we  know  our  lesson  thoroughly,  but  his  inten- 
tion is  even  more  decidedly  to  reform  modem  society. 
Blanchette  is  an  indictment  against  the  hypocrisy  of  the 
so-called  encouragement  given  to  primary  education. 
We  persuade  a  girl  that  if  she  succeeds  in  taking  a 
degree  she  will  inevitably  be  successful,  and  will  at 
once  rise  above  the  station  to  which  she  belonged;  but 
when  she  has  secured  the  precious  parchment  she  finds 
herself  not  above  but  out  of  her  class,  and  need  drives 
her  to  the  worst  extremities.  M.  de  Rehoval  is  the  story 
of  a  senator  who  thinks  himself  a  politically  unim- 
peachable character,  and  privately  a  model  of  virtue, 
because  he  has  managed  to  keep  up  two  homes  without 
causing  any  scandal.    The  whole  fabric  of  his  life  comes 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  225 

to  grief  when  his  son  in  home  No.  i  falls  in  love  with 
his  daughter  in  home  No.  2.  Les  Trois  Filles  de  M. 
Dupont  shows  the  necessity  in  which  girls  are  nowadays 
not  to  marry  or  to  marry  beneath  them  if  they  have  no 
money;  no  novelty,  to  be  sure,  but  the  play  is  an 
admirable  drama.  La  Robe  Rouge — M.  Brieux's  great- 
est success — is  a  violent  attack  upon  the  magistracy. 
A  minor  judge  in  some  provincial  court  has  no  other 
dream  than  to  don  the  red  gown  of  the  high  councillor 
in  Paris.  By  extraordinary  good  luck  a  murder  is  com- 
mitted in  his  district,  and  he  feels  sure  that  if  he  can 
find  and  convict  the  murderer  his  promotion  is  certain. 
In  fact  he  hunts  down  the  supposed  assassin  with  the 
ferocity  of  a  bloodhound.  Les  Remplagantes  is  a  scath- 
ing criticism  of  the  frivolous  Parisian  women  who  will 
not  nurse  their  children — I  mean  their  one  child — 
themselves,  and  who  trust  its  life  to  a  woman  "from 
whose  glass  they  would  never  drink,  *'  without  reflecting 
that  the  woman  has  left  her  own  baby  and  her  husband 
in  a  far-away  village,  and  that  through  their  selfish 
indulgence  a  home  has  been  broken  up. 

M.  Brieux  has  treated  the  question  of  divorce  in 
three  or  four  plays — Le  Berceau^  La  Deserteuse^  Su- 
zette — ^invariably  from  the  feminist  point  of  view  in- 
herited from  Alexandre  Dumas.  The  future  of  the 
children  seems  to  him  the  chief  question  to  consider, 
and  he  thinks  that  no  household  where  there  is  a  child 
ought  ever  to  be  broken  up,  but  that  if  this  catastrophe 
actually  happens,  the  children  must  be  left  with  their 
mother,  whose  claims  upon  them  are  supreme.  Other 
plays  deal  with  Parliamentary  corruption,  with  the 
betting  mania  among  the  poorer  classes,  with  a  certain 
foolish  respectable  reticence,  etc.  M.  Brieux  is  scared 
by  no  object. 

IS 


226  The  Return  of  the  Light 

Beside  this  revolutionist,  with  a  great  deal  of  latent 
Christianity  in  him,  we  can  place  M.  Paul  Bourget, 
who  has  become  harshly  traditional  as  he  has  become  a 
practising  Catholic.  His  plays  are  quite  as  successful 
as  his  novels,  but  they  are  very  different  from  his  early 
productions,  so  subtle  and  tender.  He  takes  invariably 
the  side  of  the  strong  and  narrow-minded  if  they  happen 
to  have  tradition  on  their  side,  and  advocates  his 
ideas  in  apparently  solidly  built  dramas.  In  Le  Divorce 
it  is  the  disruption  of  a  man  and  wife's  happiness 
because  the  wife,  after  years  of  untroubled  bliss,  has 
religious  scruples  about  her  husband's  previous  divorce ; 
in  1! Emigre  it  is  the  r61e  of  the  aristocracy  in  our  mod- 
em society;  in  La  Barricade  it  is  the  class-fight,  and  in 
Le  Tribun  it  is  the  impossibility  for  a  politician  to  be 
true  at  the  same  time  to  his  Socialist  principles  and 
to  his  paternal  instincts.  Wherever  the  exponents  of 
the  individualism  invented  by  Rousseau  and  made 
popular  by  the  Revolution  speak  of  the  rights  of  man, 
M.  Bourget  comes  forward  full  of  the  rights  of  society, 
and  showing  that  they  can  be  maintained  only  by  the 
sacrifice  of  individuals.  If  you  are  rich,  strong,  and 
contented,  M.  Bourget's  plays  will  give  you  reasons 
for  putting  up  with  the  woes  of  your  less  fortunate 
brethren;  if  you  are  weak,  ill-treated,  and  imhappy,  you 
had  better  keep  away  from  his  theatre. 

To  these  three  best-known  stage  preachers  one 
might  add  M.  Mirbeau,  M.  Ancey,  M.  Descaves,  and  a 
few  others  of  less  note.  Most  dramatists  go  the  ways 
of  novelists,  and  as  age  and  fortune  come  to  them  they 
feel  a  growing  propensity  towards  moralizing. 

Have  you  an  impression  that  any  of  the  subjects  I 
have  mentioned  is  likely  to  cause  consideration  among 
the  public,  even  among  playgoers?    Or  do  you  feel,  on 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  227 

the  contrary,  that  all  that  may  be  interesting,  but 
the  proper  time  for  discussing  it  is  after  dinner  in  a 
smoking-room,  while  morals,  real  morals,  are  reserved 
for  private  meditation?  To  ask  the  question  is  to  an- 
swer it.  Nobody  will  get  very  much  excited  over  the 
situation  of  school  teachers,  or  the  laziness  of  society 
women,  or  the  corruption  of  politicians,  or  the  ante- 
diluvian difficulty  of  marrying  off  girls  sans  dot,  or  the 
grievous  faults  of  Dame  Justice,  or  the  grievances  of 
the  French  aristocracy.  One  knows  that  a  good 
deal  of  what  is  wrong  here  below  is  inherent  in 
some  fundamental  wrongness,  and  that  the  rest  has 
such  deep  and  intricate  roots  that  it  is  difficult  to  pluck 
up  the  principal  one.  The  notion  is  a  philosophy  in 
itself. 

What  people  take  a  real  and  living  interest  in  is 
tangible,  and  not  academic.  If  the  high  cost  of  living 
could  be  clearly  and  dramatically  exposed  on  the  stage, 
the  play  would  be  a  tremendous  success.  Write  against 
the  Yorkshire  schools  or  the  meat-packing  scandals, 
you  secure  an  audience  at  once,  and  the  indignant  feel- 
ing you  raise  does  more  than  forty  years*  work.  Or 
take  advantage  of  some  transient  but  very  warm 
emotion,  and  have  Electra  performed  in  Spain,  or  some 
anti-militarist  play  in  Paris  at  the  right  moment;  you 
are  sure  of  endangering  several  lives  and  shaking  various 
institutions. 

If  you  go  to  history  and  inquire  what  dramas  with  a 
purpose  have  ever  been  effectual,  you  will  invariably 
find  that  they  summed  up  and  voiced  some  diffused 
impression,  not  always  the  one  which  the  dramatist 
wanted  to  make  use  of.  La  Dame  aux  Camelias  aimed 
at  being  a  denunciation  of  Philistine  hypocrisy;  and 
it  was  that,  no  doubt,  but  it  was,  above  all,  the  signal 


228  The  Return  of  the  Light 

of  a  conscious  and  henceforth  avowed  indulgence  for  a 
certain  class  of  women.  Les  Avaries,  by  M.  Brieux, 
was  also  intended  to  be  an  apology  for  outspokenness 
about  a  very  delicate  and  terrible  subject,  but  the  feel- 
ing it  produced  was  selfish  and  cynical.  Whenever  an 
idea  is  in  the  air  the  least  spark  will  make  it  flash. 
When  it  is  not,  no  amoimt  of  tragical  preaching  will 
create  it.  That  is  why,  after  all,  successful  dramas 
with  a  purpose  are  first  good  comedies  or  tragedies,  no 
matter  what  their  purpose  may  be,  and  it  is  foolish,  if 
one  wishes  to  be  informed  of  the  preoccupations  abroad 
in  a  country,  to  go  to  the  theatre ;  the  right  place  is  the 
roadside  inn. 

It  is  another  matter  if,  instead  of  being  in  quest  of  a 
list  of  widely-discussed  issues  capable  of  being  put  down 
in  a  note-book  and  eventually  in  a  newspaper,  one  is 
anxious  to  come  at  the  innermost  soul  of  a  nation,  at  the 
something  impalpable  which  with  individuals  is  felt 
rather  than  seen  in  the  smile  or  in  the  tone  of  the  voice, 
and  with  communities  constitutes  what  is  called  their 
spirit  or  manners.  Of  this  dramatists  are  admirable 
though  very  partial  exponents.  They  are,  they  have 
to  be,  men  of  the  world,  and  their  vocation,  as  their 
success,  lies  in  their  aptitude  to  reproduce  the  gestures 
of  the  world,  what  modem  parlance  terms  in  a  very 
distorted  and  restricted  sense — life. 

What  is  the  characteristic  of  the  life  we  can  see  in  the 
most  famous  works  on  the  modem  stage?  It  is  unfortu- 
nately too  easy  to  say.  The  knowledge  of  the  age,  its 
activities,  its  peculiar  courage,  its  manifold  aspirations, 
are  all  there,  but  never  as  the  chief  interest;  they  are 
only  the  background  or  the  frame.  The  centre  of 
interest  for  the  dramatist  is  at  present  exclusively  love. 
And  let  there  be  no  mistake;  the  love  which  we  see 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  229 

night  after  night  on  the  Parisian  stages  has  long  ceased 
to  be  the  high  feeling  productive  of  noble  actions  which 
it  was  inexhaustibly  in  mediaeval  literature;  it  is  a 
passion,  all  violence  and  selfishness,  possessing  its  vic- 
tim so  entirely  that  we  can  never  know  anything  about 
her  or  him,  through  four  or  five  acts,  except  that  he  or 
she  is  on  the  verge  of  insanity. 

Here  it  is  evident  that  dramatic  literature  is  not 
only  the  picture  of  life,  but  one  of  its  factors.  The 
drama  combines  with  modern  art,  modem  music,  and 
practically  every  materialization  of  modern  sensibility, 
to  make  a  daily  and  all-the-year-round  phenomenon  of 
what  nature  had  intended  as  a  transient  condition.  It 
is  not  in  vain  that  all  we  hear  and  see  conjures  up  the 
same  ideas;  given  a  state  of  society  in  which  idleness 
and  eternal  self-analysis  are  the  rule  with  leisured 
people,  these  people  must  exasperate  the  string  on 
which  they  are  for  ever  harping.  This,  in  fact,  is  the 
result  which  we  see  attained  in  all  artificial  lives,  whether 
real  or  imaginary ;  one  consciousness  dominates  all  the 
others,  and  it  is  the  sexual  one. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  not  surprising  that  what 
used  to  be  called  the  storms  of  passion,  the  gathering 
violence  of  love,  its  crises — jealous  or  otherwise — its  sud- 
den ending,  have  vanished  from  attention.  When  the 
curtain  rises  on  a  play  of  M.  de  Porto-Riche,  M.  Ba- 
taille,  M.  Bernstein,  or  any  of  their  numerous  imitators, 
we  know  that  the  heroine  will  be  at  least  in  the  condition 
of  the  Phedre  of  Racine,  and  we  have  no  illusion  as  to 
what  we  may  expect.  No  chance  of  any  deep-running 
passion  which  might  be  everlasting,  but  might  also  be 
mute.  Fehris  est  libido  nostra.  The  Didos  we  see  may 
easily  commit  suicide  if  they  are  given  up  by  their 
loves — nothing  in  their  state  of  mind  is  more  likely; 


230  The  Return  of  the  Light 

but  if  their  love  dies,  a  strong  instinct  tells  us  that  they 
will  soon  marry  again. 

M.  Georges  Riche — generally  known  as  De  Porto- 
Riche — was  the  initiator  of  the  drama  based  on  this 
kind  of  passion.  He  is  no  benefactor  of  mankind,  to  be 
sure,  but  he  ought  not  to  be  classed  along  with  the 
common  corrupters  whose  sole  object  is  success.  His 
latest  play,  Le  Vieil  Homme,  performed  in  March,  191 1, 
brought  forth  enthusiastic  praise,  which  such  a  glar- 
ingly immoral  piece  did  not  deserve,  but  also  a  storm  of 
abuse,  which  the  author  did  not  deserve  either.  M.  de 
Porto-Riche  is  a  true  artist.  He  has  begun  as  a  poet, 
and  nobody  is  more  fastidious  about  his  workmanship 
than  he  is.  His  enemies  make  fun  of  his  everlasting 
delays  in  the  production  of  his  pieces,  but  artistic 
scrupulousness  is  so  rare  nowadays  that  it  ought  to  be 
encouraged  and  not  laughed  at.  Certainly  M.  de 
Porto-Riche  came,  in  one  of  his  plays.  Amour euse,  very 
near  the  perfection,  not  of  Racine,  as  some  people  will 
say,  but  of  Marivaux.  Unfortunately  the  tact  of  the 
man  is  not  so  fine  as  that  of  the  writer.  M.  de  Porto- 
Riche  has  the  modem  Jew's  inevitable  propensity 
towards  the  doubtfully  rare,  the  unhealthy  exceptional, 
and  the  sweetness  of  his  honeysuckle  is  not  enough  to 
cover  other  smells  from  his  mould.  The  naturalness, 
vivacity,  and  wit  of  his  dialogue,  the  Parisian  charm  of 
his  women,  the  poetical  atmosphere  which  he  spreads 
over  his  creations,  will  not  redeem  his  fame.  When 
French  literature  recovers — as  another  chapter  shows 
that  it  will — ^its  former  healthiness,  M.  de  Porto-Riche 
will  be  remembered  as  the  first  man  who  managed 
to  make  conjugal  love  look  impure,  and  built  a  whole 
play,  Le  Vieil  Homme,  on  a  painfully  equivocal  situa- 
tion summed  up  in  this  speech  of  a  wife  and  mother  to 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  231 

her  husband:  *'Your  son  is  in  love  with  your  mistress." 
The  sadness  which  fills  those  briUiant,  sparkling  plays, 
the  idea  that  love  brings  a  special  Nemesis  along  with 
it,  is  not  enough  to  make  them  moral.  The  moraUty 
one  would  be  apt  to  gain  from  a  prolonged  familiarity 
with  these  works  is  pure  nihilism;  get  as  much  out  of 
life  as  it  can  possibly  give  you,  and  when  it  has  nothing 
left  to  tempt  you,  turn  your  back  upon  it. 

M.  Bataille  and  M.  Henry  Bernstein  are  the  im- 
mediate disciples  of  M.  de  Porto- Riche;  they  have  his 
belief  in  the  fatalism  of  passion,  his  cynicism — I  trans- 
late the  word  fearlessness  generally  used — in  taking  it 
for  granted,  and  his  dangerous  tenderness  in  watching 
its  effects;  but  M.  Bataille  is  even  more  refined  than  his 
master  in  the  notation  of  subtle  corruption;  and  M. 
Bernstein  has  rapidly  made  a  reputation  for  his  capacity 
in  imagining  and  handling  harrowing  scenes  of  violence. 
M.  Bataille  is  the  historian  of  the  women  of  forty  who 
fall  in  love  with  the  school  friends  of  their  son,  aged 
nineteen;  or  of  the  ageing  courtesans  whose  sons, 
hearing  that  they  are  on  the  eve  of  being  given  up  by 
their  protector,  suddenly  appear  on  the  scene  and 
frighten  the  truant  into  loyalty  by  means  perfectly 
impossible  to  tell.  M.  Bernstein  makes  studies  from 
the  same  kennel,  but  his  low  heroes  are  always  on  the 
point  of  committing  suicide,  or  of  being  irreparably 
disgraced,  or  of  having  with  their  parents  horrible 
scenes  in  which  they  dare  and  insult  them.  You  go  out 
of  these  spectacles  with  well-nigh  shattered  nerves,  but 
that  is  exactly  the  sensation  which  some  people  are  in 
quest  of. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  there  is  no  trace  whatever  of 
moral  beauty  in  these  plays.  It  seems  to  be  one  of  the 
most  recognized  dramatic  principles  of  the  day  that 


232  The  Return  of  the  Light 

true  nobleness  of  life  or  feeling  does  not  exist,  or  exists 
so  exceptionally  as  to  be  totally  unconvincing  on  the 
stage.  Stupidity — ^invariably  relieved  by  the  author's 
own  wit — ^hypocrisy,  falseness,  selfishness,  and  cruelty 
in  every  form  are  the  staple  of  what  is  called  Le  Theatre 
Rosse;  that  is  to  say,  the  deliberate  expression — occa- 
sionally heard  even  at  the  Comedie  Frangaise — of  the 
basest  tendencies  in  the  human  soul.  The  dark  comers 
which  the  classic  writers  did  not  ignore,  but  to  which 
they  barely  alluded,  are  emptied  out  in  the  full  blaze  of 
the  lights.  M.  Abel  Hermant  with  icy-cold  bitterness, 
M.  Courteline  with  a  curious  admixture  of  good-nature 
and  irony,  are  the  chief  representatives  of  this  heartless 
satire. 

As  a  contrast  we  find  the  plays  of  M.  Lavedan  and 
M.  Donnay,  which  probably  picture  best  the  aspects 
of  society  on  which  modern  drama  seems  mostly  to  live, 
and  the  philosophy  with  which  our  contemporaries 
generally  regard  them. 

M.  Lavedan  and  M.  Donnay  are  the  painters  of  idle 
high  life,  and  as  such  they  are  the  lineal  successors  of  a 
woman  on  whom  a  considerable  portion  of  this  light 
literature  depends,  Madame  de  Martel,  better  known 
as  Gyp.  The  characters  we  see  in  their  plays,  as  in 
Gyp's  dialogues  and  novels,  are  mostly  butterflies,  with 
not  enough  consistency  to  be  capable  of  real  wickedness, 
but  butterflies  that  had  lived  in  the  vicinity  of  a  colony 
of  much  coarser  beings  and  caught  their  language. 
When  we  try  to  remember  the  flimsy,  brilliant  creatures 
which  fill  those  hundreds  of  volumes,  numerous  as  they 
are,  we  see  only  a  few  types  always  the  same;  the  man  of 
prey  who  brings  all  his  energies  to  bear  on  the  one 
object,  to  please  himself  in  everything;  younger  men 
whom  he  trains  for  the  same  career  or  occasionally 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  233 

fleeces  mercilessly  and  smilingly;  mere  boys  who  are 
already  so  tired  of  the  game  that  they  speak  like  old 
men  with  perfect  naturalness;  old  men  who  are  pun- 
ished, in  Joubert's  phrase,  "for  loving  women  too  much 
by  loving  them  too  long,"  and  cry  over  their  lost 
pleasures  like  disappointed  boys;  women  risen  from 
nothing  into  the  semblance  of  something,  viewing  life 
sometimes  with  the  rapacity,  sometimes  with  the  reck- 
lessness, of  the  people,  and  perfectly  destitute  of  moral 
sense.  Whether  we  think  of  Le  Nouveau  Jeu,  or  Le 
Vieux  Marcheur,  or  Le  Marquis  de  Priola,  or  Education 
de  Prince,  or  even  Amants,  it  is  the  same  thing,  and  one's 
ears  are  full  of  Folly's  bells.  The  scenes  we  remember 
are  those  on  which  the  curtain  rises  in  nine  out  of  ten 
plays,  till  we  are  sick  of  them — suppers  at  Montmartre, 
very  unhealthy  seaside  places,  suspicious  boudoirs. 
The  philosophy  is  always  the  same,  too,  complete 
cynicism  so  reckless  that  it  ends  by  turning  against 
itself  and  sounding  like  sincerity.  As  to  the  language 
which  those  flitting  shadows  speak,  it  is  worthy  of 
them;  assisted  by  professional  word-handlers — writers 
and  artists — they  have  created  a  peculiar  dialect  which 
is  better  than  a  slang,  both  coarse  and  elegant,  blend- 
ing Maupassant  with  Marivaux,  searching,  accurate, 
subtle,  winged,  and  elusive,  and  yet  worse  than  cynical, 
full  of  qtiick  allusion,  ungrammatical,  punning,  and 
cheap,  but  as  picturesque  as  mediaeval  French. 

The  true  influence  of  the  plays  written  after  these 
models  lies  less  in  the  contagiousness  of  the  characters — 
perfectly  inimitable  for  whoever  is  not  both  young  and 
rich — than  in  this  remarkable  quality  of  their  language. 
As  I  said  above,  writers  copy  it,  but  they  improve  it, 
and  thousands  of  Parisians  or  would-be  Parisians  do  in 
the  theatre  what   M.   Lavedan  does  in  the  various 


234  The  Return  of  the  Light 

milieus  he  haunts;  they  take  careful  note  of  what 
phrases  strike  them  as  Hkely  to  astonish  or  dazzle  the 
uninitiated,  and  they  retail  them  to  their  friends.  The 
pity  is  that  this  means  attitudinizing,  and  a  pose  of 
this  kind  entails  the  very  easy  imitation  of  the  senti- 
ments it  presupposes.  Most  of  the  so-called  Parisian 
corruption  is  only  a  varnish  of  words  on  the  thinnest 
veneer  of  materialism,  but  many  people  are  too  weak, 
when  once  they  have  learned  imitation,  to  be  themselves 
ever  again,  and  it  takes  a  new  current  of  opinion  to 
sweep  the  puppets  out  of  the  way. 

The  difference  between  M.  Lavedan  and  M.  Donnay 
is  very  slight.  The  former  has  evident  contempt  for  his 
paltry  heroes;  scorn  is  diffused  through  all  his  books, 
even  those  in  which  he  has  no  chance  of  moralizing ;  and 
his  play,  Le  Duel^  as  well  as  a  great  portion  of  his  non- 
dramatic  productions,  shows  that  his  philosophy  differs 
widely  from  that  of  his  models.  But  he  is  not  free  from 
a  certain  subtle  weakness  which  causes  him  to  affect 
excessive  indulgence,  and  has  recently  decoyed  him 
into  writing  a  frankly  immoral  comedy,  Le  GoUt  du  Vice, 
when  he  wanted  to  satirize  modern  laxity. 

M.  Donnay  has  the  same  indulgence,  rendered  more 
dangerous  by  the  charm  he  gives  to  his  women,  and  by 
an  evident  propensity  towards  moral  anarchism  from 
which  M.  Lavedan  is  free.  He  has  lived  too  early  in 
the  near  vicinity  of  the  mad  set  he  describes  not  to  find 
it  impossible  to  shake  off  all  that  he  has  caught  from 
them.  Yet  he  has  his  philosophy  too:  the  gentle 
melancholy  inevitably  found  in  epicures.  Life  is  fasci- 
nating, love  is  intoxicating,  but  life  and  love  are  fleeting 
and  leave  sadness  behind  them.  The  heroes  of  M. 
Bernstein  disappear  with  the  bitterness  of  hatred  and 
disappointment  in  them;  those  of  M.  Donnay  survive 


r 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  235 

with  a  taste  of  soured  honey  for  ever  in  their  mouths. 
This  too  is  copied  by  thousands  of  poetic  snobs,  and 
many  a  retired  coquette  who  sighs  distinguished  epi- 
curean stoicism  behind  her  fan,  only  recites  bits  from 
Donnay. 

The  characteristic  of  the  plays  of  M.  Lavedan, 
M.  Donnay,  and,  I  ought  to  add,  M.  Capus — whose 
optimism  and  good  humour  are  a  clever  counterfeit  of 
real  health — is  the  contrast  between  the  ready  wit  of  the 
characters  in  them  and  their  invariable  moral  medio- 
crity. Most  of  these  people  would  be  charming  after- 
dinner  companions,  none  could  make  a  real  mate  in  life. 
As  to  their  creators  themselves,  superior  as  we  realize 
they  are  to  their  puppets,  they  are  too  eclectic  in  their 
sympathies,  too  ready  to  see  the  pros  and  cons  even  in 
moral  difficulties  in  which  a  healthily  trained  mind 
would  see  only  one  course,  too  superficially  intelligent, 
in  short,  to  be  of  much  use  for  whoever  seeks  more  than 
the  amusement  of  an  evening.  Even  the  best  of  us  want 
more  than  a  knowing  shrug  of  the  shoulders  or  winking 
of  the  eye  to  be  held  above  the  low  waters  of  modem 
society. 

Are  there  then  no  theatres  where  we  can  find  "people 
we  would  like  to  resemble"?  Yes,  but  they  are  few. 
For  years  the  historical  plays  which  will  never  cease  to 
appeal  to  the  eye  and  the  soul  reminded  us  that  the 
theatres  used  to  be  the  home  of  heroic  sentiments. 
Plays  like  La  Fille  de  Roland,  by  Gaston  de  Bomier, 
were  far  more  effective  morally  than  the  best- 
constructed  pieces  d  theses.  A  great  deal  of  even  Sar- 
dou's  reconstitutions  had  a  value  of  the  same  kind ;  and 
if  M.  Rostand  had  chosen  to  draw  on  that  vein  which 
was  so  rich  in  him  rather  than  on  his  imagination,  he 
had   an   undoubted   gift   for   expressing   the   peculiar 


236  The  Return  of  the  Light 

quality  of  French  courage.  Nobody  could  see  dramas 
from  the  braver  epochs  of  our  national  history  without 
being  conscious  of  present  inferiority.  But  even  the 
historical  play  has  gradually  been  tainted  by  the  canker- 
ing materialism  which  literature  calls  realism.  The 
tendency  is  to  treat  it  not  as  a  drama,  but  as  an  anec- 
dote— very  much  in  the  tone  of  M.  Lenotre's  fascinating 
books,  and  the  results  are  not  always  good.  If  you 
asked  M.  d'Annunzio  why  he  made  an  immoral  work  of 
the  story  of  Saint  Sebastian,  he  would  no  doubt  tell  you 
that  it  was  out  of  respect  for  truth. 

Between  the  drama  proper  and  the  play  with  a  pur- 
pose there  is  room  for  another  kind  of  play  working 
at  the  same  time  on  the  brain  and  the  heart  of  the  spec- 
tator, and  which,  in  default  of  a  better  word,  one  can 
call  the  idealist  play,  the  development  of  a  high  idea  or 
a  noble  feeling.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  this  age  of 
scepticism  and  hardly-disguised  selfishness  these  echoes 
of  the  teaching  of  old  are  enthusiastically  welcomed, 
not  only  by  the  critics,  but  even  by  average  audiences. 
M.  Lavedan*s  greatest  success  was  undoubtedly  Le 
Duely  which  stands  out  among  his  works  as  a  fine  old 
residence  sometimes  appears  among  tinsel  seaside  villas; 
it  is  the  story  of  a  priest,  once  a  man  of  the  world,  who 
kills  the  last  germs  of  self-love  in  himself.  The  dramatic 
work  which  caused  most  sensation  in  the  last  few  years 
was  an  awkwardly  built  but  highly  thought  and  nobly 
written  drama,  Les  Affranchis,  by  Mademoiselle  Leneru. 
This  play,  from  the  technical  point  of  view,  was  rather 
poor,  and  if  we  lived  at  an  epoch  in  which  moral  greatness 
was  not  considered  a  literary  fault,  it  would  have  taken 
the  second  or  third  rank,  but  in  these  barren  days  of  real- 
ism it  appeared  as  a  piece  of  Platonic  beauty.  The 
critics  spoke  of  it  with  exceptional  respect,  which  in  itself 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  237 

would  have  been  significant  enough,  but  this  was  not  all ; 
the  play  was  one  of  those  which  M.  Antoine  used  to 
produce  at  the  Odeon  "out  of  s)mipathy  for  young 
dramatists" — that  is  to  say,  in  plainer  language, 
because  he  was  paid  to  be  charitable  for  unknown 
talents — and  it  was  to  be  performed  only  once,  or  at 
most  twice;  in  fact,  it  had  to  be  given  over  and  over 
again,  and  before  a  month  was  over,  it  had  found  its 
way  into  the  regular  repertoire.  Clearly  the  inspiration 
of  an  inexperienced  artist  had  joined  a  reaction  of  the 
public  taste  at  the  right  moment. 

But  the  already  established  and  still  growing  fame 
of  another  independent  playwright  ought  to  have  long 
pointed  out  to  dramatic  writers  that  modem  audiences 
have  a  surfeit  of  love,  or  even  of  brilliantly  varnished 
realism,  and  crave  something  else.  It  is  nearly  twenty 
years  since  the  admiration  of  all  competent  judges 
and  the  surprised  enthusiasm  of  the  public  for  two  plays, 
entitled  L'Envers  d'une  Sainte  and  Les  Fossiles,  made 
the  name  of  M.  Frangois  de  Curel  known  and  deeply 
respected.  The  example  of  this  pre-eminently  honest 
writer  could  be  proposed  to  the  most  ambitious  as  well 
as  to  the  most  sincere.  A  descendant  of  an  ancient 
Lorrainese  family,  he  might  have  lived  a  luxurious  life, 
but  he  chose  to  follow  the  career — ^very  far  from  smooth 
in  France — of  an  engineer.  Endowed  with  powerful 
dramatic  faculties,  he  might  have  achieved  highly 
popular  success;  he  courted  supreme  distinction.  He 
always  chose  the  narrow  way  in  everything.  He  lives 
mostly  in  the  country,  in  his  native  district,  dreaming 
his  dreams,  waiting  for  real  inspiration,  indefatigably 
writing  and  rewriting  his  works  without  any  attention 
to  outward  suggestions.  The  result  is  first  of  all  a 
private  life  eloquent  in  itself,  and  in  the  second  place  a 


238  The  Return  of  the  Light 

literary  production  which  is  not  faultless  but  which 
compels  admiration. 

The  faults  of  M.  de  Curel  are  intimately  connected 
with  his  qualities.  He  bears  his  creations  so  long  in  his 
mind  that  they  all  ultimately  borrow  something  of  his 
ways  of  thinking  and  expressing  himself ;  their  language 
is  not  by  any  means  bombastic,  but  its  simplicity  could 
be  attained  only  by  exceedingly  refined,  intelligent,  and 
noble  recluses  who  spent  their  lives  in  meditation  and 
spoke  only  on  great  occasions.  It  has  something 
rhetorical  in  its  spirit,  as  there  is  oratory  in  the  general 
expression  of  the  plays  themselves.  This  may  be  part 
of  the  peculiar  power  of  the  dramatist,  but  it  requires  a 
certain  co-operation  from  the  spectator  which  the  latter 
is  not  always  disposed  to  give. 

However,  the  necessary  harmony  between  the  author 
and  his  audience  once  established,  M.  de  Curel's  plays 
appear  as  rare  productions  in  which  we  discover  under 
every  sentence  the  presence  of  a  poet,  a  psychologist, 
and  a  philosopher,  master  of  a  singularly  noble  expres- 
sion and  an  aristocrat  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  phrase. 
M.  de  Curel  is  as  incapable  of  imagining  a  low  char- 
acter and  a  common  plot  as  others  may  be  incapable 
of  the  reverse.  His  natural  bent  is  towards  heroism. 
A  brief  sketch  of  one  of  his  best-known  works,  Les 
FossileSj  will  give  an  idea  of  his  manner.  The  scene 
is  an  old  chateau,  in  which  an  ancient  family  is  slowly 
dying  away  with  only  the  pride  of  its  name  to  give  it 
courage.  The  head  of  the  family,  the  old  Duke  of 
Chantemelle,  and  his  son  Robert,  spend  their  lives  in 
their  woods,  hunting  or  brooding,  and  perfectly  unsoci- 
able. The  duchess  and  her  daughter  Claire  visit  the 
poor  and  pray.  The  all-absorbing  thought  for  all  of 
them  is  that  there  was  imequalled  dignity  in  the  great- 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  239 

ness  of  their  name,  and  the  cankering  anxiety  is  the  fear 
that  the  name  is  on  the  eve  of  disappearing  for  ever, 
for  Robert  is  threatened  with  consumption.  One 
day  Robert  tells  his  mother  that  before  his  end  comes 
he  would  like  to  see  once  more  the  governess  of  his 
sister,  a  poor  girl  whom  the  duchess  has  turned  out 
because  she  suspected  her  husband  to  be  unduly  atten- 
tive to  her.  The  young  man  soon  confesses  he  has  had 
a  child  by  the  unfortunate  governess.  He  will  never 
marry  the  mother,  but  he  thinks  of  her  baby  with  the 
anxiety  of  imminent  death.  When  the  duke  hears  all 
this  his  first  impulse  is  furious  anger,  for  he  has  really 
been  in  love  with  Helene  Vatrin  himself.  But  gradu- 
ally he  calms  himself ;  a  thought  has  dawned  upon  him : 
the  lost  hope  of  a  descendant,  here  it  is  revived.  Let 
Robert  marry  Helene  and  the  name  of  Chantemelle  will 
not  die  out.  "I  thought  of  it,"  answers  Robert,  "but 
if  Helene  comes  here  she  must  be  the  equal  of  all." 
In  turn,  the  old  duke,  the  duchess,  and  the  pure  and 
proud  Claire  accept  the  sacrifice.  But  Helene  is  no 
common  woman,  and  her  own  pride  has  to  be  conquered 
too.  When  it  is,  and  she  is  the  wife  of  Robert,  peace 
seems  to  inhabit  at  last  the  villa  near  the  Mediterranean 
where  the  family  have  come  to  try  and  save  Robert's 
life.  But  the  nurse  of  Robert's  child,  an  abominable 
woman,  who  knows  the  story  of  the  old  duke's  relations 
with  Helene,  tells  Robert  the  awful  truth.  The  latter 
receives  the  revelation  calmly.  He  does  not  care  for 
life  now  that  his  aim  has  been  attained.  He  travels 
north  with  the  certainty  and  the  hope — soon  fulfilled — 
of  dying,  and  the  play  ends  with  the  reading  of  his  will, 
a  page  of  quiet  sublimity. 

M.  de  Curel  has  not  always  been  so  successful  as  in 
this  play.     Only  once,  in  the  Repas  du  Lion,  has  he  hit 


240  The  Return  of  the  Light 

on  a  plot  capable  of  this  full  development,  but  all  his 
pieces  are  conceived  in  the  same  spirit  and  written  with 
the  same  elevation.  His  place  among  French  drama- 
tists is  curious.  If  you  ask  any  ordinary  playgoer  who 
are  his  favourites,  he  will  seldom  mention  him,  but  if 
you  ask  him  where  he  places  the  author  of  Les  Fossiles, 
he  will  often  unhesitatingly  give  him  the  first  rank. 
The  fact  is  that  our  minds  are  inevitably  influenced  by 
the  immense  number  of  dramas  written  to  amuse,  but 
it  is  also  true  that  the  streak  to  which  M.  de  Curel's 
production  corresponds  is  large  enough  to  be  regarded 
as  a  feature  of  the  public  mind  tired  at  last  of  mere 
froth  and  elegant  corruption. 

What  is  the  impression  left  by  a  comparatively 
extensive  study  of  the  modern  French  stage  and  of 
the  chief  French  dramatists  followed  not  only  in  their 
plays,  but  in  all  the  expressions  of  their  philosophy? 
Can  we  find  a  formula  that  will  enable  us  to  bring 
order  into  the  somewhat  intricate  statements  we  have 
made?  Is  there  not,  first  of  all,  uppermost  in  our 
minds,  and  difficult  to  dispel,  the  sensation  that 
modern  dramatic  production  in  France  is,  in  spite 
of  a  few  exceptions,  a  tremendous  factor  of  public 
demorahzation  ? 

Certainly,  forty-nine  in  fifty  Parisian  plays  are  more 
or  less  overtly  immoral.  The  individualism,  which  has 
been  turned  loose  at  the  great  Revolution,  and  has 
almost  uninterruptedly  gained  in  the  literary  realm 
even  more  than  elsewhere,  is  rampant  on  the  stage. 
The  fact  is  that  duty  is  less  dramatic — I  only  mean  that 
it  is  less  easy  to  dramatize — than  passion,  and  unbridled 
creatures  are  more  eloquent  than  sober  men  and  women 
accustomed  to  self-denial  and  to  habitual  suppression 
of  inordinate  sentiments.      The   consequence  is  that 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  241 

anarchism  is  frequent  and  that  no  excuses  are  given 
for  its  appearance.  Nay,  dozens  of  so-called  disciples 
of  Ibsen  still  go  on  reasoning  about  the  most  vital  issues 
and  place  in  the  mouths  of  the  characters  they  invent 
radical  utterances  about  the  destruction  of  religion, 
society,  and  even  family.  But  all  this  radicalism  is 
only  the  cant  of  the  stage,  and,  in  spite  of  all  their 
apparent  boldness,  the  successors  of  Alexandre  Dumas 
are,  as  I  have  said,  more  anxious  than  ever  to  retain 
their  claims  to  the  title  of  guides  of  the  modem  con- 
science. Summer  after  summer,  when  invited  by 
respectable  journalists  to  decide  about  the  great  issues 
of  the  day,  they  deliver  themselves  of  distinctly  con- 
servative opinions.  They  are  guarded  and  timid, 
the  moment  they  swerve  from  the  beaten  track,  and, 
on  the  contrary,  decisive  and  resolute  when  they  find 
themselves  on  traditional  ground.  This  is  the  contra- 
diction in  playwrights. 

The  same  is  found  in  the  immense  majority  of 
playgoers.  They  seem  to  favour  vice — ^for  they  will 
taboo  no  spectacle,  and  too  often  they  give  their 
wives  the  same  liberty — ^but  they  openly  blame,  on 
leaving  the  theatre,  what  they  have  been  so  anx- 
ious not  to  miss.  It  is  the  paradoxical  disposition 
which  M.  Lavedan  intended  to  impugn  in  his  Goilt 
du  Vice, 

What  are  we  to  infer?  That  there  are  in  the  air  two 
long-familiar  tendencies,  one  of  which  is  of  the  flesh 
while  the  other  is  of  the  spirit.  Modem  people  have 
become  used  to  over-exciting  food,  and  though  a  con- 
stantly better  enlightened  instinct  warns  them  more 
loudly  against  the  danger  of  anarchical  doctrines,  they 
cannot  wean  themselves  from  the  sights  and  language 
which    subtle    corruption    and    ever-increasing   talent 

xd 


242  The  Return  of  the  Light 

have  made  fashionable.     Both  writers  and  public  are 
living  a  fallacy. 

The  immediate  conclusion  we  must  draw  is  that  the 
theatre  does  not  mirror  the  city,  and  that  the  play  is 
not  painted  after  the  audience.  The  theatre  is 
something  eminently  artificial.  Whatever  playwrights 
might  say  or  imply,  they  know  that  they  work  outside 
real  life.  The  play  is  an  after-dinner  affair,  never 
included  in  the  concerns  of  the  serious  hotirs,  attended 
by  people  who  wear  a  special  garb,  bring  in  special  dis- 
positions, expect  a  special  light,  and  would  be — in 
fact  are  every  now  and  then — considerably  startled 
when  they  meet  something  more  like  the  morning  light 
and  morning  thoughts,  as  in  the  plays  of  M.  de  Curel. 
It  is  agreed  on  all  sides  that  the  theatre,  just  like  the 
music-hall,  is  a  concession  made  by  seriousness  to  folly. 
The  most  successful  plays  are  none  of  those  I  have 
named  for  their  literary  or  philosophical  excellence; 
they  are  mere  pieces  of  extravagant  drollery,  like 
Papa  or  the  Manage  de  Mademoiselle  BeulemanSy  with 
which  neither  morals,  nor  philosophy,  nor  art  in  the 
higher  sense  of  the  word,  have  anything  to  do.  A  great 
deal  of  the  language  of  an  epoch  is  manufactured  on  the 
stage  by  clever  artisans  in  phrases — not  essentially 
different  in  this  from  the  higher  class  of  tailors — but 
its  ideas  come  from  deeper  sources — economics  and 
politics  to  be  named  first — ^which  the  novel,  literary 
criticism,  and  the  multiform  newspaper  article  handle 
and  begin  to  formulate  long  before  the  theatre  takes 
note  of  their  histrionic  value  and  gives  them  its  appar- 
ently vivid  but  in  fact  flimsy  reality.  The  destructive 
plays  we  have  reviewed  in  this  chapter  are  manifesta- 
tions of  a  belated  stage  of  French  opinion  and  of  artificial 
appearances.     The  state  of  mind  at  present  in  the  mak- 


Anomaly  of  the  Stage  243 

ing  would  be  found  in  the  evolution  of  a  typical  French- 
man like  M.  Jules  Lemaltre,  or  in  that  of  M.  Barres,  and 
in  the  literature  of  their  disciples.  It  means  a  strik- 
ing advance  in  the  direction  of  seriousness,  a  mistrust 
of  wit  for  wit's  sake,  as  well  as  of  the  empty  formulae 
that  the  past  generation  delighted  in,  an  anxiety  about 
the  morrow  made  of  selfishness,  to  be  sure,  but  includ- 
ing a  recognition  of  solidarity  and  an  accompanying 
responsibility;  above  all,  it  means  a  sense  of  the  real 
which  we  seemed  to  have  lost  and  which  the  rising 
generation  possesses  to  a  refreshing  exaggeration;  for 
a  time  comes  when  narrow-mindedness  and  stubborn- 
ness appear  refreshing  compared  to  cheap  scepticism. 
Of  this  change  the  stage  shows  no  traces  yet,  though 
literature  has  noticed  it  for  several  years.  If  the  reader 
should  wish  to  realize  the  gulf  between  the  theatre  and 
life  he  would  only  have  to  read  a  little  book,  Mon 
Filleul,  published  by  M.  Lavedan  just  as  he  produced 
Le  GoUt  du  Vice.  The  contrast  is  extraordinary. 
There  is  more  wit  in  the  play  than  in  the  book,  but  this 
is  not  the  question.  M.  Lavedan  is  a  very  good  French- 
man and,  I  might  say,  a  very  good  man — though  some- 
what ashamed  of  it — and  in  both  the  book  and  the 
play  there  is  a  moral  inspiration,  a  desire  of  improving 
the  times.  But,  as  I  said  above,  Le  Gout  du  Vice  was 
a  signal  failure,  stage  necessities  making  it  imperative 
for  M.  Lavedan  to  be  light  and  affect  immorality  when 
intending  to  preach  seriousness  and  morals,  while 
Mon  Filleul  is  highly  persuasive.  Yet  in  Le  GoUt  du 
Vice,  as  well  as  in  Mon  Filleul,  the  author  wanted  to 
present,  and,  in  fact,  did  present,  modem  types.  But 
the  characters  in  the  play  are  evening  Parisians  who 
could  only  be  artificial,  superficial,  and  bubbling,  while 
those  in  the  book  are  a  very  tolerably  real  godfather 


244  The  Return  of  the  Light 

and  godson  talking  about  the  subjects  of  the  day  in 
the  language  of  the  day. 

8.     The  Rising  Generation 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  the  change  in  the 
national  spirit  brought  about  by  the  Tangier  awakening 
is  more  visible  in  the  rising  generation — the  men  be- 
tween eighteen  and  twenty-five — than  in  its  predecessor 
and  some  people  maintain  that  this  change  is  so  marked 
that  it  amounts  to  a  modification  in  the  traditional 
temperament  of  the  French.  We  shall  investigate  the 
change  and  discuss  the  so-called  modification. 

First  of  all,  is  there  really  a  contrast  between  the 
generation  which  came  to  manhood  towards  1870  and 
its  offspring?  Yes,  imdoubtedly ;  but  so  much  has  been 
written  on  this  contrast  that  a  great  deal  that  is  born 
of  words  has  already  taken  the  place  of  plain  truth,  and 
one  feels  on  one's  guard. 

To  begin  with  the  doomed  period,  the  much  despised 
last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  is  too  often 
judged  from  the  celebrated  preface  to  Le  Disciple,  in 
which  Bourget,  in  1889,  divided  contemporary  youth 
into  two  sections ;  one  consisting  of  the  brutally  cynical, 
and  the  other  of  refined  if  enervated  nihilists.  This 
preface  is  an  estimable  piece  of  rhetoric,  but  it  is  rhetori- 
cal from  beginning  to  end,  and,  as  is  invariably  the 
case  with  unduly  successful  rhetoric,  it  has  begotten  an 
immense  progeny  of  mere  words.  It  is  true  that  there 
were  brutal  cynics  and  dainty  Revolutionists  among  the 
young  men  of  those  days,  but  were  they  a  majority?  Is 
it  not  better  to  say  that  they  represented  that  portion 
of  young  Frenchmen  who,  being  either  professional 
writers    or    abstractions    from    contemporary    novels 


The  Rising  Generation  245 

— ^those   of   Daudet,    for   instance — were,   above   all, 

literary  matter? 

It  has  been  the  pleasant  lot  of  the  present  writer 
to  see  a  great  deal  of  French  youth  from  the  year  1890. 
These  young  men  were  mostly  fervid  and  enthusiastic, 
as  fortunately  young  men  will  be.  We  did  see  some 
specimens  of  effete  aristocracy  or  wealth,  we  occasion- 
ally heard  brutal  assertions  concerning  the  use  of  life, 
and  I  knew  two  perfect  samples  of  the  pretty  affectation 
which  was  then  called  Buddhism  and  turned  a  boy  of 
twenty -two  into  a  sort  of  indulgent  old  man;  but  these 
were  exceptions.  The  fact  is  that  there  was  no  object 
for  popular  passion,  no  definite  ideal  of  any  kind. 
Politics  ran  high,  but  they  were  hardly  ever  taken 
seriously,  and  a  young  man  might  spend  the  time 
between  his  leaving  school  at  eighteen  and  his  marry- 
ing at  twenty-five  without  encountering  any  subject 
that  really  appealed  to  him.  Some  few  individuals 
owed  to  their  surroundings  an  interest  in  the  campaigns 
of  Drumont  against  the  Jewish  power,  or  of  Barres 
against  Parliamentary  corruption,  or — this  was  my  case 
— ^in  the  evolution  of  the  Church  towards  acceptance  of 
modern  conditions,  and  the  ralliement  advocated  by 
Leo  the  Thirteenth;  but  they  were  very  few,  and  the 
truth  is  that  universal  stagnation  prevailed. 

Consequently,  we  may  say  that  personal  experience, 
even  in  the  case  of  a  man  connected  all  his  life  with 
intellectual  milieus  and  intelligent  young  men,  provides 
us  with  very  few  positive  data,  and  on  the  contrary 
with  a  great  deal  that  is  purely  negative.  So  it  was 
mostly  through  books  and  magazines,  through  the 
innumerable  manifestoes  which  esthetic  or  ethical 
**  schools"  issued  so  freely,  through  inferences,  in  a  word, 
from  literary  evidence,   that  we  gathered  anything 


246  The  Return  of  the  Light 

about  the  restricted  Parisian  circles  which  are  fre- 
quently offered  us  to-day  as  having  given  its  tone  to 
that  period. 

Tolstoism  was  purely  literary,  and  so  was  Buddhism, 
and  no  less  so  the  Nietzscheism  which  appeared  in  the 
early  works  of  Barr^s,  and  the  Socialism  which  we 
discover  rather  retrospectively  in  the  books  of  Peguy. 
The  cynicism  of  which  Bourget  complains  did  exist,  no 
doubt,  but  in  many  cases  it  was  created  more  than 
represented  by  the  theatre,  and  thus  was  literary  too. 
Young  men  were  restless  in  default  of  something  really 
mastering  to  give  themselves  to,  and  they  tried  all  that 
came  within  reach  without  much  conviction.  We  have 
heard  many  times  that  for  several  years,  Jaures  had 
great  influence  over  the  students  at  the  Ecole  Normale, 
and  we  find  in  fact  that  two  or  three  of  them  found  their 
way  behind  him  into  the  Chamber  and  a  few  others 
into  the  Press.  But  read  the  recollections  of  Peguy  to 
which  I  referred  above,  you  will  feel  immediately  that 
the  so-called  Socialist  wave  was  limited  to  the  delight  of 
a  few  lads  in  being  distinguished  by  a  famous  orator, 
and  magnified  by  the  same  delight  in  an  imconscion- 
able  manner.  As  much  might  be  said  of  the  influence 
of  Paul  Desjardins,  or  of  Barr^s  in  his  first  years,  or  of 
many  a  man  who  seemed  to  be  a  man  at  the  time — ^for 
instance,  Ernest  Lajeunesse — and  is  at  present  hardly 
a  name. 

The  average  young  men  of  the  declining  nineteenth 
century,  therefore,  were  mostly  what  their  fathers* 
conversation  and  the  tone  of  the  age  made  them. 
Scientism  ruling,  they  were  far  from  all  belief,  but  not 
averse  to  a  vague  mysticism;  Renan  having  been  the 
great  admiration  of  the  generation  before  them,  they 
affected  a  distinguished  dilettantism,  or  a  distinguished 


The  Rising  Generation  247 

scepticism,  or  a  distinguished  nihilism — even  Jules 
Lemaitre  knew  these  affectations;  peace  seeming  set- 
tled, they  had  a  great  contempt  for  war,  and  were 
above  barbarism  and  Revanche;  they  were  incredibly 
jealous  of  their  liberty,  but  this  was  chiefly  talk,  as  they 
consented  readily  enough  to  become  officials,  with  no 
other  liberty  than  that  of  shirking  their  work.  In  short, 
they  were  the  products  of  a  time  in  which  nothing 
decisive  was  taking  place,  either  in  man's  thought  or  in 
his  life ;  they  had  vague  ideals,  vague  ideas,  and  a  vague 
though  frequently  expressed  disgust  of  it  all,  which 
sounded  more  like  cynicism  than  surfeit,  but  was  in 
reality  surfeit. 

Against  this  description  we  should  now  place  the 
portrait  of  the  contemporary  young  man.  It  ought  to 
be  easily  drawn  as  the  model  is  before  our  eyes,  but  we 
are  confronted  with  the  same  difficulty  which  stood  in 
our  way  with  respect  to  the  foregoing  generation;  too 
much  has  been  written  already,  too  much  is  affirmed 
because  it  sounds  logical,  and  we  have  to  sift  and  criti- 
cize once  more.  In  the  course  of  the  years  19 12  and 
1 9 13,  the  newspapers  and  magazines  were  ftill  of  this 
Dauphin,  the  modern  young  man.  Elderly  gentlemen 
interviewed  him  day  after  day  with  that  respectful 
eagerness  which  gives  a  somewhat  silly  appearance  even 
to  some  letters  written  by  Taine  when  the  Dauphin  was 
called  Bourget;  and  the  answers  poured,  decisive  and 
confident,  rather  systematic  too,  with  a  dash  of  philoso- 
phy thrown  over  the  facts.  Many  an  interested  reader 
must  have  concluded,  as  did  M.  Faguet  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes:  "Yes,  they  are  very  well,  but,  by  Jove, 
they  are  not  modest."  The  fact  is,  they  generally  talk 
as  if  they  were  the  masterpiece  of  their  own  hands. 

Of  course,  they  are  only  the  sons  of  their  fathers,  bom 


248  The  Return  of  the  light 

under  happier — morally — circumstances,  and  enjoying 
the  privilege  which  belongs  to  all  happily  bom  sons, 
of  having  no  doubts  about  themselves. 

They  certainly  are  sensible.  You  never  hear  them 
launch  into  fine  speeches  about  the  vague  ideals  which 
triumphed  with  the  Dreyfusists.  They  are  guarded 
and  reserved  in  the  presence  of  theories,  they  insist  on 
being  given  chapter  and  verse  about  everything,  and 
you  see  them  boldly  do  a  thing  which  was  considered 
uneducated  and  almost  ill-bred  in  1895 — viz.,  foresee 
consequences.  They  also  have  sober  ideas  about  the 
rights  of  man,  those  rights  of  man  the  mention  of  which 
was  formerly  enough  to  throw  down  every  barrier  to 
individual  freedom.  They  stand  for  duties  and  dis- 
cipline. They  take  no  nonsense  from  Socialism,  and 
the  tendency  is  so  universal  that  you  find  it'  among  the 
younger  Syndicalists  themselves.  They  respect  the 
police,  and  despise  indulgent  jurymen;  in  short,  they 
are  a  great  deal  more  reasonable  than  their  own  fathers, 
and  Ludovic  Halevy — the  author  of  La  Famille  Cardi- 
nal,  it  is  true — when  he  said  that  he  stood  rather  in  awe 
of  his  sons,  was  only  a  little  way  in  advance  of  the  times. 

But  if  you  analyse  the  environment  and  circum- 
stances in  which  this  phenomenon  took  place,  you  will 
find  that  the  fathers  and  tutors  of  these  young  men  are 
largely  responsible  for  it. 

No  lad  of  eighteen  ever  took  up  the  cudgels  for  wis- 
dom, order,  restraint,  and  generally  the  soberer  virtues, 
unless  he  was  made  to  love  them,  and  it  takes  consider- 
able eloquence  to  make  him  love  them.  But  there  sel- 
dom were  more  eloquent  people  than  the  fathers  of 
these  young  fellows,  because  they  were  not  only  sincere 
but  pathetic,  and  to  a  certain  extent  comical  in  their 
disappointments.     If  they  had  not  so  heartily  believed 


The  Rising  Generation  249 

in  Liberty  they  would  not  have  been  so  heartily  tired  of 
seeing  Liberty  never  result  in  Hberties.  If  they  had 
not  listened  with  complaisance  to  the  florid  speeches  of 
Jaures  and  his  compeers  they  would  have  been  less 
irresistible  when  they  at  last  broke  out  into  the  "words, 
words,  words"  of  perfect  disgust.  Perhaps  if  they  had 
not  been  deluged  with  so  much  filthy  literature  they 
would  not  have  had  such  a  surfeit  of  it.  As  it  was,  they 
spoke  with  an  admixture  of  surprise  and  discontent 
which  a  boy  will  invariably  construe  as  akin  to  naivete 
and  esteem  in  consequence.  Certainly  there  is  a  shade 
of  contempt  in  the  appreciation  of  the  last  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century  by  the  men  who  are  now  twenty-five, 
because  they  could  not  but  feel  certitudes  where  they 
saw  their  fathers  only  arrive  at  inferences. 

In  the  same  way  it  took  either  genius  or  the  best  kind 
of  Catholic  education  to  resist  the  influence  of  Taine,  or, 
above  all,  Renan,  in  the  'nineties,  because  determinism 
and  scepticism  were  positively  in  the  air.  The  vogue 
of  a  doctrine  acts  as  a  physical  law.  To-day  our  young 
men  find  that  scientism  is  effete,  determinism  coarse, 
and  scepticism  provincial.  They  find  that  the  fash- 
ionable philosophy  taught  by  a  non-Christian — there  is 
something  amiss  in  calling  M.  Bergson  a  Jew — adopted 
on  all  hands,  and  just  enough  contradicted  by  theolo- 
gians not  to  appear  immediately  religious,  is  a  vindica- 
tion of  spiritualism  and  free  will,  and  indirectly  a 
demonstration  of  a  divine  power;  it  is  inevitable  that 
they  should  be  without  effort  all  that  was  most  difficult 
thirty  years  ago. 

Again,  it  is  true  that  French  education  is  still  exag- 
geratedly literary;  and  that,  judging  by  the  plans  and 
methods  recommended,  often  too  by  actual  practice,  it 
would  seem  as  if  every  French  boy  were  destined  for 


250  The  Return  of  the  Light 

the  career  of  a  writer,  often  of  a  playwright,  or  at  least 
of  a  dramatic  critic.  But  professors  have  changed 
all  the  same.  They  are  no  longer  those  whom  Bourget 
knew  in  the  -Paris  lydeSy  who  never  said  a  word  to  their 
boys  outside  the  class,  and  during  class  never  said  a 
word  that  did  not  concern  literature,  and  more  or  less 
overtly  the  Hterature  of  the  day.  The  fallacy  which 
placed  true  greatness  exclusively  in  the  power  of  feehng 
or.  imagining  and  expression  is  rapidly  making  way  for 
something  more  broadly  human  and  manful.  The 
professors  of  to-day  have  not  yet  become  what  different 
conditions  caused  the  professors  of  the  seventeenth 
century  to  be:  men  who  used  the  classics  as  a  means 
and  not  an  end,  in  the  absolute  certainty  that  neither 
themselves  nor,  above  all,  their  pupils,  had  one  chance 
in  ten  thousand  of  ever  printing  a  line.  They  still  write 
a  great  deal,  and  the  enormous  amount  of  printed 
matter  accumulating  outside  the  school  walls  weighs 
upon  their  imagination  and  reacts  on  their  speech,  but 
they  have  served  their  time  in  the  army  and  remember 
it  with  pleasure,  and  few  are  those  who  do  not  honestly 
reaHze  that  being  comes  before  writing.  The  notion  of 
a  man  as  an  intelligent  will  rather  than  a  longing 
fantasy  once  more  becomes  familiar  and  banishes  the 
opposite  monstrosity. 

All  this  being  the  atmosphere  we  breathe  and  take 
in  quite  naturally  cannot  but  have  results,  and  the 
"contemporary  young  man,"  if  he  is  not  all  that  he 
thinks  and  says  of  himself,  is  at  least  no  fiction. 

As  I  said  above,  he  is  somewhat  positive  and  trench- 
ant about  principles,  and  is  seldom  decoyed  into  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  bases  of  individual  or  even  social  ethics. 
It  seems  as  if  in  this  respect  the  experience  of  his  father 
had  actually  passed  into  his  blood,  as  if  he  remembered 


The  Rising  Generation  251 

the  endless  debates  of  twenty-five  years  ago,  and  had 
made  up  his  mind  that  he  has  had  quite  enough.  The 
purely  academic  attitude  is  a  very  rare  exception,  which 
however,  I  met  with  some  time  ago.  It  was  at  the  house 
of  an  engineer  whose  name  was  mentioned  at  the  time  of 
the  Dreyfus  Affair.  A  young  professor  of  philosophy 
was  there,  a  good-looking,  smartly  dressed  man  of 
twenty-eight,  with  an  eager  and  yet  cold  expression, 
which  I  could  not  at  first  make  out.  It  was  only  as 
the  conversation  became  more  animated  that  I  saw 
where  the  eagerness  tended.  This  young  philosopher 
was  full  of  doubts,  which  is  certainly  not  amiss  in  a 
philosopher,  but  he  was  dying  to  play  them  off,  and 
gradually  did  so  with  an  imperfectly  disguised  satis- 
faction which  was  very  unpleasant  in  itself;  in  religion 
and  morals,  as  well  as  politics,  there  was  nothing  he 
would  not  question.  The  sons  of  our  host — three 
young  men  between  eighteen  and  twenty -four — sturdy, 
whole-souled  fellows,  instantly  fired  up,  not  once 
deigning  to  discuss  his  arguments,  which  would  not 
have  been  very  difficult,  but  constantly  reverting  to  the 
fact  that  these  hair-splittings  were  all  very  well  in  a 
room  where  nothing  was  going  on  except  cigarette- 
smoking,  but  were  worse  than  useless  in  the  street. 
The  difference  in  the  point  of  view  was  vital,  and  the 
young  philosopher  looked  curiously  anachronistic. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  the  verbiage  of  mere  politi- 
cians should  be  treated  with  contempt  by  the  rising 
generation.  The  politician  is  regarded  as  not  only 
intellectually  but  morally  inferior,  a  man  who  drives  a 
profitable  though  disreputable  trade,  and  covers  his 
dealings  with  patriotic  pretences.  Even  a  Gambetta 
would  be  impossible  to-day  unless  he  preached  exactly 
the  reverse  of  Gambetta's  doctrine — that  is  to  say,  did 


252  The  Return  of  the  Light 

not  see  remedies  in  the  success  of  a  party.  Young 
men  no  longer  go  to  political  meetings  with  no  other 
immediate  object  than  the  return  of  a  deputy;  the  very 
idea  is  enough  to  move  either  their  laughter  or  their 
anger.  The  consequence  is  that  political  divisions 
among  them  are  immaterial  compared  with  what  they 
were  in  1880.  If  Deroulede  had  died  then,  his  funeral, 
instead  of  being  attended  by  a  hundred  thousand  men 
so  united  in  the  great  patriotic  idea  that  not  one  jarring 
cry  was  heard,  would  have  been  a  riotous  scene.  If 
General  Picquart  had  died  before  1906,  we  should  not 
have  seen  what  took  place  at  St.  Cyr  on  the  occasion 
of  his  funeral :  permission  granted  to  the  nine  hundred 
cadets  to  attend  the  ceremony  independently  if  they 
pleased,  and  not  one  taking  advantage  of  it,  because 
doing  so  would  have  looked  like  a  decidedly  political 
demonstration. 

The  purely  patriotic  feeling  has  almost  universally 
replaced  political  tendencies,  and  it  is  at  present  at 
least  jealous  and  sensitive.  The  Sorbonne  professors, 
having  imder  the  influence  of  M.  Monod,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  exaltation  which  accompanied  the  Dreyfus 
Affair,  been  imduly  indulgent  to  Internationalism  and 
insistently  partial  for  German  methods,  are  far  from 
popular  with  their  audiences.  Men  like  MM.  Aulard, 
Seignobos,  V.  Basch,  and  Andler,  who  a  few  years  ago 
found  no  contradiction,  are  frequently  spoken  of  now  as 
shamefaced  Frenchmen,  taken  to  task  for  their  short- 
sighted erudition,  and,  which  is  worse,  made  to  look  as 
the  representatives  of  a  dead  and  not  very  honourable 
past.  Students  are  still  fond  of  going  abroad,  and,  in 
fact,  almost  a  majority  of  them  manage  to  spend  a  year 
or  two  at  some  foreign  university.  But  what  a  contrast 
between  the  impressions  they  publish  and  those  of  their 


The  Rising  Generation  253 

seniors !  The  latter  either  wrote  in  the  cold  impersonal 
spirit  of  Taine  or  in  that  of  Loti,  at  best  in  that  of  Bour- 
get's  Sensations  d'Oxford.  All  that  rose  in  these  pro- 
ductions above  mere  poetic  dilettantism  was  a  regret  of 
some  opportunity  missed  in  France  and  envied  where 
the  writer  found  it.  The  point  of  view  was  invariably 
individualistic,  and  is  apt  to-day  to  look  selfish  or  child- 
ish. The  travelling  impressions  of  students  nowadays 
are  still  picturesque,  but  they  would  be  ashamed  of 
being  nothing  else,  and  in  most  cases  they  might  be 
written  not  by  men  with  a  literary  training  and  object 
but  by  diplomatic  or  consular  agents  constantly  bear- 
ing in  mind  the  patriotic  point  of  view  or  the  European 
relation  of  France.  Stendhal  is  much  nearer  these 
wide-awake  inquirers  than  Gobineau,  and  the  German 
tendencies  of  the  latter  are  probably  responsible  for 
the  neglect  in  which  he  is  already  left. 

It  is  not  surprising,  and  I  ought  hardly  to  mention, 
that  the  Tangier  shock  should  have  been  felt  more  by 
young  men  than  by  anybody  else.  I  have  said  else- 
where how  it  affected  even  the  working  classes,  and  it  is 
remarkable  that  the  impulse  which  was  then  given  has 
not  lost  any  of  its  energy.  Interview,  if  you  have  a 
chance,  a  private  soldier :  you  will  find  not  only  that  he 
accepts  the  prospect  of  serving  three  years  without 
repining,  but  takes  a  keen  interest  in  the  progress  of  the 
twenty-year-old  recruits  who  joined  his  regiment  at 
the  end  of  1913;  he  evidently  has  thought  much  of  war 
as  a  practical  possibility  and  is  preoccupied  with  it. 

Matter-of-fact  and  business-loving  as  the  richer 
classes  have  become,  they  gladly  take  on  the  military 
charges.  You  never  hear  the  impatient  jests  of  former 
days  about  the  absurdity  and  uselessness  of  much  that 
is  done  in  the  barracks.     The  great  object  ennobles  all 


254  The  Return  of  the  Light 

the  mean  details.  There  was  something  almost  pitiful 
in  a  letter  of  Bernstein,  the  dramatist,  admitting  two 
or  three  years  ago  that  he  had  not  seen  at  twenty  the 
greatness  of  military  servitude  as  he  saw  it  now.  A 
young  man  like  Lieutenant  Ernest  Psichari,  the  grand- 
son of  Renan,  giving  up  his  career  and  exchanging  his 
prospects  for  the  life  of  a  private  in  an  African  regi- 
ment, would  have  seemed  a  brainless  madcap  at  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century;  to-day  he  is  a  typical 
Frenchman. 

Even  schoolboys  have  felt  the  universal  influence 
and  show  it  in  their  simple  way.  It  seems  yesterday 
that  the  present  writer  knew  a  boy  of  seventeen,  the 
son  of  French  parents,  but  brought  up  in  America, 
who  used  to  shake  his  head  in  polite  disapproval  when- 
ever war  was  mentioned,  and  only  excited  amusement 
among  the  other  boys.  To-day  he  would  be  hooted  or, 
more  probably,  speedily  converted.  When  the  possi- 
bility of  a  war  is  mentioned,  all  professors  notice  those 
signs  of  interest  about  which  an  experienced  man  is 
never  mistaken. 

All  this  is  clear  enough  and  certain  enough.  Owing 
to  the  experiences  and  disappointments  of  past  years, 
the  Frenchman  of  to-morrow  will  be  what  the  French 
have  been  throughout  their  history,  excepting  a  short 
period  evidently  partaking  of  the  nature  of  a  disease, 
neither  afraid  of  nor  philosophically  antagonistic  to  war, 
and  probably  inclined  to  it.  A  great  deal  that  is  said 
about  this  subject  by  men  who  are  not  young  sounds 
rather  boastful  and  bombastic,  but  it  is  only  because 
they  are  not  young.  The  same  things  said  by  their 
sons  seem  natural.  These  carry  about  with  them  a 
changed  atmosphere. 

It  is  difficult  to  be  as  affirmative  on  a  few  other  points 


The  Rising  Generation  255 

which  have  been  frequently  discussed  recently.  MM. 
Tarde  and  Massis  in  their  book,  Les  Jeunes  Gens 
d'Aujourd'hui,  say  that  the  rising  generation  is  purer 
and  more  moral  than  its  predecessors.  It  certainly 
stands  a  better  chance,  for  literature  is  infinitely  less 
salacious  than  it  used  to  be,  philosophy  is  no  longer  a 
dissolvent,  and  the  tone  of  conversation  is  improved; 
the  insistence  upon  gauloiserie,  which  was  the  rule  since 
the  empty  brilliant  days  of  the  Second  Empire,  is  now 
bad  form,  and  that  perfectly  Parisian  type  the  fanfar on 
de  vice  looks  provincial  even  in  the  country.  But  we 
have  to  be  content  with  those  appearances,  which  after 
all  have  generally  been  supposed  to  mirror  with  com- 
parative accuracy  the  real  state  of  affairs,  and  possibly 
with  the  fact  that  young  men  have  a  tendency  to  marry 
earlier  than  was  customary,  as  appears  from  University 
and  Army  statistics. 

The  same  ought  to  be  said  of  the  religious  inclination 
of  young  men.  There  is  no  positive  evidence  that  they 
are  better  Catholics  than  their  seniors,  but  they  are 
hardly  ever  anti-clerical,  and  their  philosophy  leads  to, 
rather  than  from,  a  religious  life.  Here  again  we  are 
conscious  of  an  atmosphere  which  is  not  of  yesterday, 
and  the  superiority  of  our  young  men  lies  in  their  finding 
it  ready  instead  of  having  to  create  it.  Perhaps  if  the 
foregoing  generation  had  not  had  the  unpleasant  experi- 
ence of  blighting  unbelief,  or  had  not  painfully  groped 
its  way  out  of  the  vague  religiousness  associated  with 
the  name  of  Tolstoi,  the  field  would  appear  less  open 
for  Catholic  influences  than  it  is  at  present.  But  per- 
haps again  the  conditions  we  see,  being  the  fruits  of 
disgust  rather  than  of  faith,  may  amount  only  to  a  sort 
of  neutral  goodwill  with  a  great  deal  of  the  notion — 
widely  spread  after  the  Revolution  and  after  1898 — 


256  The  Return  of  the  Light 

that  religion  is  indispensable  for  a  nation,  but  individu- 
als need  only  be  generally  favourable  to  it.  This  view 
usually  results  in  the  estabHshment  of  apparently  strong 
ecclesiastical  institutions  apt  to  deceive  the  clergy  about 
dangerous  undercurrents,  and  only  effective  if  they  help 
and  do  not  replace  proselytizing. 

The  last  characteristic  of  the  contemporary  young 
man  is  his  taste  for  action.  Here  so  much  perplexing 
nonsense  is  heard  and  repeated  that  we  must  proceed 
carefully  and  light  up  our  path  with  useful  distinctions. 
All  the  yoimg  men  whom  MM.  Tarde  and  Massis  have 
interviewed  declare  that  they  are  tired  of  theories  and 
talk,  and  that  if  they  have  to  go  to  school  in  order  to 
live,  it  shall  be  the  school  of  life  itself.  This  sounds 
very  much  like  theories  and  talk  in  disguise,  and  we 
are  not  surprised  to  see  this  exalted  resolve  occasionally 
supported  by  the  authority  of  William  James,  or — more 
timidly — by  Whitman:  there  is  a  great  deal  of  mere 
literature  or  philosophizing  in  it.  Let  us  give  credit  for 
these  speeches  only  to  the  inborn  want  of  the  French 
to  have  intellectual  systems  to  rest  upon.  Now  we 
must  ask  ourselves  what  the  people  who  really  do  some- 
thing are  doing.  Is  it  more,  or  of  a  better  quality,  or 
accomplished  in  a  higher  spirit?  M.  Gustave  Le  Bon, 
who  is  a  well-known,  and  deservedly  well-known,  social 
philosopher,  does  not  think  so;  modem  young  men,  he 
says,  are  all  ''arrivistes.''  This  is  sweeping  indeed  and 
seems  insufficiently  demonstrated.  Probably  M.  Le 
Bon,  who  is  an  idealist,  is  unpleasantly  affected  by  the 
fact  that  the  possession  of  wealth  or  influence  is  the 
apparent  object  of  practically  every  activity.  But  this 
may  only  be  an  appearance,  or  a  bequest  of  the  preced- 
ing generation,  which  does  not  essentially  belong  to 
o\irs.    The  real  question  is  whether  our  young  men  are 


The  Rising  Generation  257 

not  impelled  toward  action  by  a  more  or  less  conscious 
craving  after  self -development,  and  it  seems  that  the 
answer  ought  to  be  in  the  affirmative. 

The  American  taste  for  "doing  something,**  what- 
ever it  may  be,  which  M.  Demolins  proposed  more  than 
twenty  years  ago  for  our  admiration  and  imitation, 
certainly  is  at  the  root  of  French  activity.  Young  men 
still  marry  heiresses — and  commercial  and  industrial 
expansion  rapidly  multiplies  the  number  of  heiresses — 
but  they  would  be  ashamed  to  live  on  their  wives' 
money ;  they  are  often  seen  to  go  into  partnership  with 
their  fathers-in-law  instead  of  leaving  them  to  their 
low  avocations.  When  such  chances  do  not  offer, 
they  seldom  resign  themselves  to  the  passivity  which 
used  to  be  the  rule ;  in  default  of  something  better  they 
travel,  trying  to  give  to  their  pastimes  the  appearance 
of  utility.  The  recently  developed  literary  hobby 
among  the  aristocracy,  ridiculous  in  one  aspect,  pro- 
ceeds however  from  the  dread  of  being  useless. 

The  evident  progress  among  women  also  works  in 
the  same  direction.  Society  women  who  spend  their 
mornings  in  hospitals  qualifying  for  the  Red  Cross,  girls 
who  take  up  the  classics,  or  medicine,  or  the  law,  as 
hundreds  and  thousands  do  at  the  present  moment, 
often  without  any  mercenary  views,  could  hardly  co- 
exist with  the  shameless  specimens  of  laziness  that 
Lavedan,  Donnay,  and  Gyp  before  them  looked  upon  as 
representative  in  the  'nineties.  Energy  is  in  fashion, 
and  veulerie,  as  it  is  called  in  the  most  unpleasant 
syllables  in  the  language,  is  superannuated. 

Another  proof  of  this  change  is  the  comparative 
desertion  of  Government  careers.  The  official  is 
frequently  despised  on  account  of  his  lack  of  independ- 
ence, his  indifference  to  his  work,  the  uneventfulness 
17 


258  The  Return  of  the  Light 

of  his  life,  and  the  habit  he  has  of  thinking  himself  the 
master  instead  of  the  servant  of  the  pubHc.  This 
contempt  begins  to  tell.  The  competition  for  situa- 
tions in  the  great  industrial  enterprises  at  one  end  of  the 
scale  and  for  the  big  shops  at  the  other  is  speedily  re- 
placing the  old  struggle  after  "quiet  positions.**  The 
number  of  candidates  even  for  professorships  is  not 
half  of  what  it  was  twenty  years  ago,  and  at  the  last 
examination  for  agregation  in  natural  philosophy  the 
jury  found  just  enough  competition  for  a  bare  applica- 
tion of  their  rules.  All  this  shows  an  evident  return  to 
the  spirit  of  enterprise  which  characterized  the  French 
quite  as  much  as  the  English  when  France  and  England 
were  the  only  nations  with  colonial  empires. 

Another  sure  sign  of  the  same  reaction  is  the  popu- 
larity of  sports,  and,  above  all,  the  consciousness  of 
the  qualities  developed  by  sports.  Sports  used  to  be 
regarded  in  France  from  two  different  standpoints. 
There  were  the  people  who  enjoyed  open-air  exercise, 
and  those  who  did  not  care  at  all.  The  former  would  go 
in  for  riding,  fencing,  fives  or  rackets,  but  they  were 
quite  as  ignorant  as  the  latter  of  that  reasoned  pleasure 
in  them  which  is  characteristic  of  the  modem  practice 
of  sports.  A  man  might  fence  or  play  tennis  every  day 
of  his  life,  and  not  take  the  least  interest  in  a  boxing 
match,  which  to  him  would  be  only  a  circus  perform- 
ance. Sport  was  first  of  all  exercise,  then  an  art,  and 
then  to  a  certain  extent  rivalry,  but  the  latter  was  in  as 
small  a  proportion  as  can  be  conceived.  To-day  the 
numberless  boys  whom  you  see  in  the  streets  kicking 
a  small  ball  according  to  mysterious  rules,  or  in  the  sub- 
urbs of  towns  playing  Rugby  as  scientifically  as  they  can, 
certainly  enjoy  the  physical  sensation  of  the  game,  and 
the  excitement  of  it,  but  they  seem  above  all  to  delight 


The  Rising  Generation  259 

in  doing  it  because  a  certain  difficulty  is  attached  to 
doing  it  to  perfection.  Their  pleasure  is  quite  similar 
to  that  which  their  fathers  used  to  take  in  being  drilled 
at  the  imminent  risk  of  being  punished.  Sportiveness 
is  a  conviction  rather  than  a  taste,  and  in  numberless 
instances  it  does  duty  for  religion.  There  is  an  effort 
under  it  all.  The  pleasure  of  obeying  in  spite  of  being 
French  is  novel  and  piquant,  and  is  sustained  by  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  exaltation,  and  by  the  delight  of  having 
a  vote  and  a  voice  in  a  club.  The  absolute  spontaneity 
of  the  Englishman  in  the  enjoyment  of  games  is  here 
replaced  by  the  consciousness  of  pleasant  self-conquer- 
ing, and  I  will  show  by  and  by  that  this  feature  is  pro- 
bably the  most  important.  At  all  events,  the  tendency 
of  sporting  young  men  is  a  highly  self-realized  one, 
involving  attention  to  physical  and  moral  development 
much  more  than  the  impassioned  condition  one  is  con- 
scious of  in  an  English  or  American  boxing-ring. 

Some  people  affect  to  speak  of  aviation  as  a  kind  of 
sport,  and  lay  great  stress  on  French  superiority  in  it, 
but  the  least  effort  at  analysing  the  airman's  state  of 
mind  shows  that  it  has  nothing  in  common  with  that 
of  the  sportsman ;  it  is  entirely  and  exclusively  an  aspect 
of  the  old  military  spirit  of  the  French,  and  as  such  is 
far  more  significant  than  any  amount  of  sporting  in- 
terest. Certainly  there  is  a  world  between  the  sages 
of  1898  and  the  fascinating  specimens  of  French  pluck 
we  see  at  Buc  and  Villacoublay. 

To  conclude,  the  new  generation  appears  stronger  in 
its  instincts,  more  resolute,  and  almost  stubborn,  in 
its  ideas  than  its  predecessor,  altogether  nearer  nature 
and  less  artificial,  in  spite  of  the  wisdom  it  has  inherited 
rather  than  acquired.  In  one  respect  it  seems  to  show 
an  unheard-of  development  of  the  national  character, 


26o  The  Return  of  the  Light 

and  we  must  now  ask  oiirselves  whether  the  traditional 
temperament  of  the  French  is  really  undergoing  a 
change  about  which  we  ought  to  make  up  our  minds, 
whether  it  be  to  accept  or  counteract  it. 

9.    Is  the  New  Generation  Less  French? 

This  so-called  change  has  been  pointed  out  several 
times  and  deplored  by  friendly  foreigners,  the  best 
known  of  whom  is  Mr.  J.  E.  C.  Bodley. '  To  anybody 
who  knew  and  loved  France  some  fifteen  years 
ago,  these  writers  say,  and  revisits  it  at  present,  the 
contrast  is  striking  and  painful.  The  idealism  for 
which  the  French  have  been  famous  throughout  their 
history  has  vanished,  so  have  their  broad-mindedness 
and  their  warm-heartedness,  and  even  the  gaiety  with- 
out which  they  were  almost  unthinkable.  Paris  is 
absiu'dly  overestimated:  any  foreigner  who  lives  there 
for  any  length  of  time  will  find  it  a  depressing  place  with 
a  dull  atmosphere.  The  French  are  almost  universally 
what  they  used  to  be  once  in  rare  exceptions — viz. 
Chauvinists,  on  their  guard  against  their  neighbours, 
thinking  a  great  deal  more  of  war  and  revenge  than  of 
culture,  thinking  of  money  too.  They  used  to  be 
charming  conversationalists,  but  in  this  also  they  have 
lost ;  they  have  replaced  the  drawing-room  with  the  field, 
and  make  unsuccessful  efforts  to  become  sportsmen. 
Seriousness  and  application  are  not  becoming  to  them: 
the  strain  easily  turns  to  sadness;  in  fact,  they  are 
melancholy. 

The  great  grievance  seems  to  be  that  the  French  are 
less  good  "Eiu*opeans"  than  they  were.     Paris  was  a 

^Vide  "Decay  of  Idealism  in  France,"  in  Cardinal  Manning  and 
Other  Essays.    Longmans,  191 2. 


The  New  Generation  261 

sort  of  national  park  for  Europe,  not  so  long  ago. 
Everybody  could  come  there,  and  not  only  find  a  wel- 
come, but  even  a  something  yielding  which  was  the  sub- 
tlest of  flatteries ;  an  aptitude  to  lend  oneself  to  a  foreign 
point  of  view,  to  see  and  point  out  charm  in  a  visitor, 
when  the  visitor  himself  was  not  quite  conscious  of  it; 
a  contempt  for  prejudices,  which  was  unspeakably 
refreshing  after  the  narrow-mindedness  one  had  left  at 
home;  a  dash,  often  a  recklessness,  which  bespoke  that 
wonderful  apprehension  of  things  suh  specie  ceternitatis 
which  was  the  fascination  of  Renan  and  helped  you  to 
realize  that  there  was  a  philosophy  under  cosmopolitan- 
ism. Now  the  French  are  only  French,  and  seem  to  be 
that  somewhat  defiantly:  a  great  falling  off! 

This  impression  shows  clearly  that — owing  no  doubt 
to  the  development  of  France  as  a  purely  intellectual 
nation  which  began  with  the  Encyclopaedists,  was  at 
its  fullest  in  the  heyday  of  Renan's  celebrity,  but  became 
only  thoroughly  conscious  of  itself  in  Anatole  France's 
compositions — the  French  had  grown  to  be  in  the  eyes 
of  leisured  Europeans  supremely  dainty,  costly,  ingen- 
ious toys,  but  toys  all  the  same,  with  which  it  had  long 
ceased  to  be  dangerous  to  play.  France  was  a  wonder- 
ful field  for  experiments  of  all  sorts;  literary,  moral, 
religious,  political,  or  social,  which  the  natives  carried 
on  for  the  enjoyment  of  Europe  with  captivating  dar- 
ing. To  what  extent  the  admiration  was  mixed  up  with 
something  less  sympathetic  it  is  not  easy  to  say,  but 
when  its  expression  was  unqualified  it  was  apt  to  sound 
unintelligent  as  much  as  friendly. 

Place  beside  it  the  terribly  wide-awake  clear-sighted- 
ness of  a  barbarian  of  genius  like  Bismarck,  or  the  out- 
spokenness of  a  writer  with  manly  instincts  like  Kipling, 
the  truth  flashes  upon  you  at  once.     The  so-called 


262  The  Return  of  the  Light 

friends  of  France  were  as  blind  as  she  was  herself  to  the 
earthly,  not  metaphysical,  consequences  of  her  attitude. 
They  were  evil  companions,  dangerous  flatterers,  and 
as  in  their  hearts  they  could  not  abstract  themselves 
from  worldly  considerations,  every  time  France  was 
struck  and  they  could  not  refrain  from  thanking  Pro- 
vidence for  not  being  born  toys,  they  appeared  hypo- 
critical. Uncritical  love  is  apt  to  find  itself  in  that 
position. 

If  it  is  folly  to  imagine  that  a  nation  can  keep  its  feet 
steady  on  the  earth  with  its  head  in  the  clouds,  it  is 
ignorance  to  suppose  that  France,  in  the  typical  periods 
of  her  history,  was  frivolous  and  delightful,  or  ideal- 
istic and  reckless,  as  the  so-called  *'good  Europeans" 
like  her  to  be.  We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that 
the  recent  and  deplorable  development  was  a  literary 
disease  and  nothing  else.  Nations,  like  individuals, 
show  various  reactions,  occasionally  have  moods  which 
do  not  touch  their  original  character.  The  classical 
description  of  the  Gallic  disposition,  with  its  two 
propensities:  rem  militarem  et  argute  loqui,  never  ceased 
to  apply  to  the  French  temperament;  but  there  are 
times  for  everything.  A  hundred  and  twenty  years 
ago  there  were  probably  already  in  Paris  refined  circles 
in  which  argute  loquentes  slurred  their  r's  and  strutted 
to  insufficiently  dressed  women,  but  it  was  lucky  that 
toward  the  same  time  armies  of  ragged  men  with  several 
very  uncivilized  notions  were  guarding  the  frontier  and 
carrying  on  rem  militarem  irrespective  of  rhetoric  or 
philosophy. 

Hardly  two  ages  in  the  succession  of  French  history 
present  the  same  physiognomy.  There  is  a  world 
between  mediaeval  simplicity  and  the  violence  of  the 
sixteenth  century.     The  age  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth 


The  New  Generation  263 

is  as  different  from  its  successor  as  a  retired  diplo- 
mat is  different  from  a  sprightly  young  seigneur  com- 
ing back  from  England  full  of  M.  de  Bolingbroke,  of 
theories  and  persiflage.  Sometimes  the  strong  side, 
sometimes  the  brilliant  side  of  the  national  character 
appears.  What  we  see  in  history  we  could  have  seen  in 
the  chess-board  of  the  various  classes.  Literary  people 
of  inferior  quality,  politicians,  worldlings  who  live  only 
by  shining,  all  the  individuals  who,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  mask-like  fairies  in  Scandinavian  mythology,  sub- 
sist only  so  long  as  nobody  sees  their  hollow  side,  are 
very  different  from  the  millions  which  form  the  back- 
bone of  the  nation.  While  they  talk  the  French  are 
apt  to  indulge  in  all  sorts  of  nonsense,  but  it  is  no  less 
true  that  they  distrust  mere  talk  the  moment  they  act. 
When  the  great  carnival  of  theories  which  went  on 
during  and  immediately  after  the  Dreyfus  Affair  was 
the  success  of  the  day,  one  might  have  supposed  that 
everybody  was  in  it.  Yet  if  you  had  inquired  among 
the  classes  which  are  the  true  representatives  of  French 
activity,  the  useful — not  the  butterfly — aristocrat,  the 
bourgeois  merchant,  the  peasant,  and  the  soldier  would 
all  have  given  you  sound  common-sense  even  on  the 
burning  question  of  the  day.  Add  that  Paris  may  be 
saying  what  it  pleases  to  amuse  itself  and  its  guests,  but 
all  the  time  it  does  so,  slow-going  Flanders  and  wary 
Champagne,  crafty  Normandy  and  stubborn  Brittany, 
wise  Touraine  and  shrewd  Lorriane,  astute  Provence  and 
solid  Dauphine,  all  the  cautious  old  provinces  in  their 
castellated  fortresses  of  plain  good  sense  are  silent  and 
expectant.  The  time  always  comes  when  these  reserves 
are  turned  to  account. 

Frothy  Paris — or,  I  should  say,  the  froth  of  Paris, 
for  the  rue  Saint-Denis  is  decidedly  sensible — with  its 


264  The  Return  of  the  Light 

babbling  deputies  and  tattling  journalists,  its  loud  thea- 
tres and  over-subtle  lecture-rooms,  has  been  silenced  for 
a  time,  and  whoever  realizes  that  France  is  a  greater  and 
better  thing  than  the  cosmopolitan  guartier  de  VOpera 
ought  to  rejoice  at  seeing  stronger,  if  ruder,  elements 
come  uppermost  just  when  they  are  needed.  Surely 
young  Frenchmen  are  not  less  French  for  hating  hu- 
manitarian nonsense  and  preferring  their  own  country. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  deny  the  existence  of  a  few 
ridiculous  features  in  the  new  generation,  which  cannot 
but  strike  the  visitor  somewhat  unpleasantly.  Exag- 
geration is  the  fault  of  all  collective  impulses. 

To  begin  with,  the  fashion  tends  towards  gravity,  and 
gravity  does  not  sit  well  on  the  average  Frenchman. 
The  interest  in  foreign  politics  has  created  a  new  breed 
of  journalists  who  enjoy  the  advantages  of  being  the 
first  of  their  kind  in  this  country,  and  magnify  their 
importance  accordingly.  I  have  described  in  another 
chapter  their  social  attitude :  it  consists  in  silence,  silence 
in  all  its  eloquent  meanings,  from  heroic  self -suppression 
to  unquestionable  triumph.  A  council  of  such  mutes 
in  the  dining-  or  smoking-room  is  irresistible :  the  Ama- 
dan  Academy  did  not  come  near  it.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  this  is  copied  by  fashionable  young  men  who  pre- 
tend to  lunch  with  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  dine  with  M. 
Venezelos,  and  unaffectedly  let  us  admire  their  thorough 
mastery  over  some  such  question  as  the  Naxos  fisheries. 
The  sportsman,  too,  is  a  very  reticent  person.  He  is 
afraid  of  passing  for  a  braggart,  and  although  he  merely 
plays  football  at  Arcueil  or  even  golf  at  Neuilly,  he  is  as 
modest  as  if  he  were  Bleriot  or  Vedrines  themselves. 
He,  in  his  turn,  is  not  only  imitated  but  improved 
upon  by  that  very  un-French  creation,  the  boy  scout. 
The  boy  scout  is  too  young,  otherwise  he  would  be 


The  New  Generation  265 

clean-shaven ;  he  dresses  in  khaki,  which  will  never  look 
well  in  the  Meudon  woods ;  he  is  unduly  tall  for  his  age 
and  country,  wears  enormous  boots  which  he  never 
thinks  ugly  enough,  shows  any  amount  of  spindle  legs, 
and  apes  to  perfection  the  globe-trotting  gait  of  the 
American  artists  in  the  Boulevard  Raspail.  His  chief, 
a  young  man  of  twenty-four,  in  a  sombrero  and  sober 
grey,  is  a  cross  between  a  Methodist  minister  and  a 
New  England  schoolmaster;  I  have  never  seen  one 
whom  I  could  suppose  to  have  been  in  a  line  regiment 
the  year  before;  I  have  never  met  a  party  of  scouts  in 
the  train  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  without  a  vague  fear 
lest  they  should  demurely  rise  and  solemnly  strike  up  a 
hymn.  With  what  a  regret  they  make  one  look  back 
to  the  lazy  dawdling  columns  of  the  lyceens  of  old,  who 
had  never  walked  more  than  four  miles  when  they  left 
school,  and  thought  nothing  of  twenty  the  week  after 
they  joined  a  regiment !  But  it  takes  no  great  divining 
power  to  prophesy  the  disappearance  of  all  khaki  boys 
within  two  years  and  their  absorption  into  the  societis 
militaires. 

Some  foreign  observers  will  have  it  that  it  is  not  only 
seriousness  but  sadness  and  anxiety  that  are  visible  in 
modem  Frenchmen.  Are  they  right?  Certainly  the 
workman  of  yore  seemed  to  do  his  work  more  cheerfully 
than  he  does  it  to-day,  and  the  tradesmen  who  retired 
from  their  little  shop  to  a  house  in  the  hanlieue  thirty 
years  ago  seemed  to  talk  more  light-heartedly  than  we 
hear  them  now.  Syndicalism,  machinery,  and  banks 
at  every  corner  are  no  elements  of  cheerfulness.  You 
feel  no  inclination  to  merriment  when  you  contemplate 
a  strike  of  which  your  wife  strongly  disapproves ;  you  do 
not  attempt  to  sing,  even  if  you  are  a  mason,  a  carpen- 
ter, or  a  painter,  when  your  every  movement  is  regu- 


266  The  Return  of  the  Light 

lated  by  a  noisily  puffing  steam-crane;  and  you  will  look 
grave  behind  your  counter,  even  if  pennies  pour  into 
your  till,  when  rubbers  go  down  just  after  you  bought 
them.  Modern  civilization,  if  civilization  we  must  call 
it,  is  as  deadly  to  simple  joy  as  mere  ecus  were  to  La 
Fontaine's  cobbler.  With  the  multiplication  of  money 
one  can  notice  the  disappearance  of  taste.  It  is  obvious 
in  the  passion  of  the  Sunday  sportsman  for  gaudy  col- 
ours ;  the  sight  of  two  teams  of  motley  Neapolitan-look- 
ing footballers  in  the  fortifications  makes  you  feel  an 
alien  among  these  young  men.  And  the  house  of  the 
thriving  clerk  goes  the  way  of  his  clothes.  The  environs 
of  Paris,  which  were,  and  still  are  in  many  places,  so 
harmonious,  are  a  nightmare  in  some  others.  The 
house  which  the  Parisian  petit  bourgeois  fancies  stands  in 
a  lotissement — that  is  to  say,  the  site  of  an  historical  park 
brought  over  by  a  Jewish  syndicate  and  geometrically 
cut  up — it  is  narrow  so  as  to  save  space  and  high- 
shouldered  so  as  to  gain  some;  it  is  made  of  brick  or  of 
the  hideous  yellow  meulihe  because  it  must  be  cheap, 
and  is  exposed  in  its  ugly  nudity  because  creepers  are 
said  to  be  damp,  and  the  creamy  or  softly  pink  casts  of 
old  are  only  good  for  villagers'  houses ;  it  has  a  garden, 
but  no  tree,  shrub,  or  hedge  is  suffered  in  it  because 
doctors  recommend  light  and  the  thriving  clerk  is  a  bom 
gardener;  there  it  is,  looking  like  a  sentry-box  in  its 
desolate  prison  yard.  Look  out  when  you  come  from 
Calais  for  a  place  called  Aulnay,  a  few  miles  before  you 
reach  Saint-Denis :  you  will  see  what  the  thriving  clerk 
has  made,  of  all  places,  of  the  forest  of  Bondy ;  or  visit 
Meudon  and  see  what  horrors  the  few  magnificent 
cedars  that  are  left  of  the  Dauphin's  park  are  made 
to  shelter;  or  visit  Ecouen,  with  its  princely  chateau, 
and    see — no,     do     not    see    anything    else.      Alas, 


The  New  Generation  267 

alas,  how  much  there  would  be  to  say  about  Paris 
itself!  How  much  has  gone  down,  and  how  much 
has  gone  up,  the  thought  of  which  is  almost  un- 
bearable! The  municipal  councillor  is  of  the  same 
essence  as  the  grocers  who  elect  and,  which  is  worse, 
pay  him,  and  the  architect  is  as  servilely  cringing  to 
the  Jew  as  the  suburban  builder  is  to  his  colonies 
of  clerks. 

What  sort  of  people  live  in  those  houses?  What 
are  their  ways  and  deportment?  What  is  their  talk? 
Much  is  said  that  is  disheartening.  These  people  are 
mostly  the  sons  of  provincial  immigrants,  people  bom 
among  the  vineyards  of  Burgundy  or  the  lavender  hills 
of  Provence;  their  fathers  had  traditions,  a  peculiar 
accent,  and  racy  old  phrases  which  conjured  up  a 
rich  background  as  they  spoke.  Sometimes  quaintly 
dressed  relations  visited  them,  and  often  the  old  woman 
who  waited  at  their  tables  had  not  parted  with  the  head- 
gear of  her  valley.  All  this  is  gone.  Modern  civili- 
zation razes  old  ways  as  it  does  old  houses;  the  sons 
of  these  new  families  copy  the  American  lads  they  see 
in  the  rue  de  Rivoli,  their  conversation  is  said  to  be 
deliberately  heartless  and  colourless,  even  the  French 
they  speak  is  emptied  of  its  flavour.  It  is  learned,  not 
in  the  Place  Maubert  where  Montaigne  would  linger 
listening  to  market  women  speaking  even  more  pictur- 
esquely than  he  wrote,  nor  from  Moli^re,  or  La  Fon- 
taine, or  the  familiar  classics,  but  from  the  morning 
paper  with  its  impersonal  political  language  on  the  first 
page,  and  its  columns  of  foreign  news  on  the  third, 
translated  from  blank  international  English  by  a  night- 
clerk  often  as  disarmed  before  French  as  he  is  before 
English,  seeking  security  in  vagueness,  and  letting  the 
good  old  French  words  grow  so  thin  under  his  drowsy 


268  The  Return  of  the  Light 

hand  that  they  seem  to  have  floated  where  they  are  on 
the  metaphysical  waves  of  the  wireless. 

All  this  sounds  very  like  transformation,  and  trans- 
formation for  the  worse.  If  young  Frenchmen  copy 
foreign  fashions,  lose  the  traditional  French  taste,  are 
practical  and  money-making,  suffer  their  language 
to  lose  flesh  and  colour,  in  a  word  look  as  modern  as 
Australians,  does  it  not  mean  that  the  Iron  Age  is  too 
strong  for  any  resistance,  and  that  France  will  not  be 
equal  to  her  vocation? 

First  of  all,  let  it  be  remembered  that  these  appear- 
ances have  nothing  to  say  to  the  two  chief  character- 
istics of  contemporary  youth  in  France,  which  are  an 
instinctive  aversion  from  words  and  an  instinctive 
appreciation  of  energy.  These  seem  to  be  vital,  the 
rest  is  only  appearances.  But  even  these  appearances 
ought  to  be  qualified. 

To  begin  with,  it  is  very  likely  that  they  will  be 
ephemeral,  because  they  are  the  products  either  of 
imitation  or  of  transient  conditions.  The  French  have 
always  been  fond  of  imitations,  which,  however,  leave 
their  national  temperament  as  intact  as  the  carnival 
mask  does  their  face.  The  two  periods  in  French  history 
which  have  left  the  most  decidedly  brilliant  impression 
upon  foreigners  are  the  later  part  of  Louis  the  Fif- 
teenth's reign  and  the  Second  Empire.  Now,  the  smart 
people  whom  Walpole  visited  at  Paris  and  Versailles 
showed  such  an  Anglomania  that  he  was  at  first  amused, 
but  gradually  disgusted;  and  as  to  the  Second  Empire 
galaxy,  it  had  a — to-day  astonishing — partiality  for  the 
Prussian  aristocrats,  who  were  constantly  welcomed 
at  the  Tuileries  or  at  Compiegne.  Khaki,  large  boots, 
clean-shaving,  the  affectation  of  self-control,  all  these 
fashions  will  be  replaced  by  others  within  a  decade. 


The  New  Generation  269 

Then  we  ought  to  make  allowance  for  the  social  modi- 
fications which  are  invariably  attended  with  exaggera- 
tion and  effort.  In  France,  as  in  the  rest  of  the  world, 
the  step  onward  from  peasantry  and  simplicity  produces 
unpleasant  effects:  affectation,  a  display  of  poor  taste, 
the  levelling  uniformity.  But  this  step  is  not  the  first, 
and  those  which  came  before  were  not  very  different. 
The  turbaned  old  women  from  the  South,  whose  con- 
versation seems  to  us  so  delightfully  old-fashioned, 
would  appear  civilized  and  uninteresting  beside  their 
grandmothers;  each  generation  sheds  a  few  character- 
istics— which  the  next  generation  does  not  regret  be- 
cause it  has  no  idea  of  them — but  originality  is  not 
attached  to  such  appearances:  when  it  fails  us  in  the 
plain  workman  we  find  it  in  the  well-dressed  artist ;  sin- 
cerity is  the  parent  of  originality,  and  no  amount  of 
civilization  will  prevent  sincerity  from  occasionally 
bursting  upon  the  world.  The  French  language  as  we 
see  it  degraded  in  the  newspapers  is  only  the  ghost  of 
itself,  but  Fenelon  and  La  Bruyere  thought  they  saw 
the  same  phenomenon  in  their  time,  and  yet  the  lan- 
guage survived  in  the  works  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau, 
Chateaubriand  and  Michelet.  I  shall  point  out  later 
that  at  this  present  moment  respect  for  words  is  much 
more  general  among  writers  than  it  was  throughout  the 
nineteenth  century. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  decadence  in  architect- 
ural taste :  its  chief  cause  is  the  recently  acquired  inde- 
pendence of  classes  which  are  rich  enough  to  demand 
comfort  and  not  developed  enough  to  care  for  beauty. 
But  while  rows  after  rows  of  hideous  houses  dismay  the 
sensitive  vision,  the  delight  of  numberless  artists  in  the 
quiet  harmony  of  the  old  farm  or  the  old  country  house 
is  daily  made  more  contagious,  and  must  before  long 


270  The  Return  of  the  light 

result  not  only  in  rescuing  what  is  left  of  the  past  but  in 
forcing  its  imitation. 

We  may  safely  conclude  that  mere  fashions  in  cos- 
tume, language,  and  ways  ought  not  to  be  given  more 
importance  than  fashions  have  a  right  to.  They  must 
be  put  up  with,  like  the  weather,  and  if  they  are  counter- 
acted let  it  be  gently.  But  it  would  be  a  thousand 
times  deplorable  if  seriousness,  praticalness,  and  mis- 
trust of  unreasoned  impulses  resulted,  as  some  people 
contend  they  do,  in  moroseness,  unintelligence,  and 
apathy.  A  morose,  unintelligent,  apathetic  France 
would  have  no  business  in  Europe.  But)  this  catas- 
trophe is  very  remote.  In  spite  of  superficial  appear- 
ances magnified  by  paradoxical  observers,  the  French 
are  still  gay.  When  they  put  on  gravity  the  uncontrol- 
lable spirit  soon  breaks  through,  were  it  only  in  the  in- 
ferior form  of  irony.  But  gravity  is  the  pose  of  few 
circles.  You  will  find  no  trace  of  it  in  its  affected  aspect 
outside  the  "world,"  literary  milieus,  and  possibly 
sportsmen.  When  half  a  dozen  Frenchmen  are  engaged 
in  a  real  conversation  the  conversation  is  gay,  and 
circumstances  matter  little.  In  spite  of  persecutions 
and  confiscations,  priests  and  nuns  have  lost  nothing  of 
the  childlike  light-heartedness  which  makes  their  chief 
charm,  soldiers  are  gay,  and  workmen  are  only  taciturn 
where  they  have  to  be,  in  the  thundering  factory,  in 
the  crowded  train,  in  the  busy  hostile  street.  Select  a 
sullen-looking  navvy  in  a  trench  and  ask  him  a  few 
questions :  in  spite  of  his  Syndicalism  and  of  his  prob- 
able antagonism  to  your  class,  it  will  be  very  extra- 
ordinary if  in  a  minute  or  two  you  do  not  see  him  give 
a  funny,  good-humoured  twist  to  his  answers.  I  met 
once  three  straggling  young  scouts  who  probably  would 
have  looked  duly  Methodistical  had  they  been  with 


The  New  Generation  271 

their  friends.  Playing  truant  as  they  did,  they  were 
irresistible  in  their  view  of  their  irregular  situation. 
The  oldest  one  indulged  in  a  comparison  between  his 
own  kind  and  a  party  of  American  scouts  who  were  just 
being  entertained  in  Paris.  Fanfan  la  Tulipe  circa 
1750  would  have  explained  his  case  with  exactly  the 
same  insouciance. 

It  is  also  the  effect  of  mere  appearances  if  the  so- 
called  loss  of  Idealism  is  said  to  have  resulted  in  loss 
of  the  elan  which  belongs  to  the  race.  Propagandism, 
which  Joseph  de  Maistre,  a  foreigner,  noted  as  the  chief 
French  characteristic  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, is  still  at  the  root  of  all  French  action  and  the 
fountain  of  French  eloquence,  but  for  the  present  it  has 
lost  its  guiding  formulae — the  multiform  embroidery 
of  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity  which  dazzled  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  Third  Republic  has  gradu- 
ally emptied  them  all  of  their  dynamic  force,  and  the 
patriotism  which  has  taken  their  place  in  the  last  seven 
years  is  wise  enough  not  to  be  loud.  Certainly  it  is  thus 
quiet  merely  because  it  differs  from  the  Revanche  spirit 
of  1887,  in  being  much  deeper  and  stronger.  If  there 
had  been  a  war  in  191 1 — ^not  in  1906 — it  would  have 
been  entered  on  in  as  brisk  a  spirit  as  can  well  be  con- 
ceived. In  default  of  a  war,  any  great  cause  worth  the 
name  would  easily  bring  together  youthful  energies,  but 
careful  analysis  of  the  present  situation  in  France  re- 
veals the  lack  of  any  such  cause,  apart  from  the  national 
peril.  The  disgust  created  by  Radical  politics  is  deep 
and  universal,  but  its  origin  is  so  protean  and  confused 
that  it  escapes  the  popular  grasp. 

Is  there  any  more  reason  for  fearing  lest  the  French 
of  the  rising  generation  should  have  lost  their  ancestral 
capacity  for  abstracting  and  generalizing?    Are  they 


272  The  Return  of  the  Light 

going  to  fall,  from  sheer  mistrust  of  verbiage  and  atten- 
tion to  matter-of-fact  realities,  into  what  Carlyle 
called  the  "post-prandial" — precisely  as  opposed  to  the 
French — way  of  conceiving  things?  Is  the  argute  logui 
a  gift  which  can  be  lost  at  a  few  years'  notice?  The 
very  idea  seems  ludicrous.  No  generation  was  ever 
more  full  of  generalizations  about  everything — ^itself 
included — than  the  present  one.  It  would  be  a  fault 
if  it  were  not  merely  the  national  bias  which  nobody  can 
resist.  Take  the  three  or  four  volumes  which  have  been 
written  about  the  recent  developments,  read  any  of  the 
many  works  in  which  the  private  views  of  young 
writers — in  default  of  literary  schools — are  summed  up ; 
you  will  find  them  as  conscious  and  systematized  as 
if  they  had  been  dictated  by  a  Condillac.  The  marvel 
is  to  see  the  identical  sportsmen,  who  think  so  highly  of 
action  for  action's  sake,  infer  as  complete  a  philosophy 
from  their  tendencies  as  if  they  were  professional  critics. 
As  to  the  conversations  one  hears — say  among  ofi^cers — 
they  are  simply  brimful  of  "ideas, "  and  as  it  is  true,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  theories  or  "views"  are  mis- 
trusted, it  must  be  merely  because  the  native  pro- 
pensity has  never  been  so  unconscious  of  itself,  so 
instinctive  and  rich.  Surely  its  intimate  connection 
with  unintellectual  human  patriotism  makes  it  far  more 
active  than  it  was  in  the  days  of  Taine  and  Renan,  when 
speculation  ran  riot. 

Let  these  croakers  croak,  and,  in  spite  of  childish 
affectations,  do  not  let  us  suppose  that  Frenchmen  are 
less  French  for  being  sensible  and  cool-headed;  France 
had  been  herself  for  many  centuries  before  she  became 
infected  with  the  intellectual  diseases  from  which  she  is 
at  present  recovering.  I  hope  that  the  reader  sees 
clearly  that  the  credit  of  the  recovery,  as  I  have  en- 


The  Church  and  France  273 

deavoured  to  show,  does  not  belong  entirely  to  the 
superior  insight  of  the  younger  generation — practically 
the  only  men  of  fifty  who  have  learned  little  or  nothing 
by  the  experience  of  the  last  twenty  years  are  limited 
politicians — ^but  France  as  a  nation  gives  to-day  the 
impression  of  something  young,  whereas  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth  century  it  gave  the  impression  of  age, 
fatigue,  and  disillusionment.  It  is  natural,  therefore, 
that  we  should  associate  the  characteristics  of  the 
country  in  this  new  state  with  its  younger  members. 
That  these  characteristics  are  not  likely  to  vanish  as 
superficial  agitations — obviously  political — ^have  done 
before,  there  is  every  reason  to  suppose,  and  the 
greatest  part  of  this  volume  is  a  defence  of  such 
hopes. 

10.    Does  the  Church  Play  any  Active  Part  in  the  Trans- 
formation  of  France? 

This  question  is  one  which  sympathetic  inquirers 
abroad  constantly  ask  and  about  which  they  seem  most 
uncertain,  sometimes  hearing  uncritically  sanguine  ac- 
counts, sometimes  unduly  pessimistic  rumours.  It  will 
be  made  clearer  if  we  ask  ourselves  to  what  extent  the 
Catholic  Church  is  responsible  for  the  reaction  towards 
a  higher  morality,  a  more  solid  social  order,  and  a  better 
mental  equilibrium  which  is  the  subject  of  this  volume. 
Two  descriptions  will  enable  the  reader  to  answer  for 
himself. 

It  is  a  fact  that  all  the  distinguished  individuals 
whose  conversion  from  indulgence  to  morals  I  have 
pointed  out  in  another  chapter  have  undergone  a 
similar  transformation  with  regard  to  religion.  They 
may  not  be  believers,  most  of  them  are  not  and  will 

X8 


274  The  Return  of  the  Light 

probably  never  be;  they  have  been  too  deeply  tainted 
with  the  scepticism  in  which  they  were  bred,  or  they 
are  both  lazy  and  critical,  and  they  are  afraid  to  launch 
— somewhat  late  in  the  day — into  researches  which 
almost  invariably  demand  an  undivided  and  passionate 
attention,  but  they  speak  of  religion,  of  the  Church,  of 
priests,  monks,  and  nuns  with  seriousness  and  respect. 
Not  only  men  like  Jules  Lemaitre  or  Barres — not  to 
speak  of  Bourget — who  may  have  semi-political  reasons 
for  leaning  to  that  side,  but  typical  Parisians  like  Capus 
or  Lavedan,  men  who  once  represented  that  vanished 
entity  the  boulevard^  and  even  at  present  aim  hardly 
higher  than  at  being  the  sages  of  the  green-room  and 
the  divines  of  the  Figaro  or  U Illustration,  men  whose 
attitude  is  the  more  easily  copied  because  in  most  cases 
it  is  only  a  reflection  from  movements  in  society  itself, 
show  an  imfeigned  respect  for  the  tenets,  ethical  teach- 
ing, and  constitution  of  the  Church.  Twenty  years 
ago  writers  of  this  stamp  could  not  refrain  from  shrugs 
and  smiles,  which  meant,  as  plainly  as  elaborate 
treatises  might  have,  that  there  were  things  in  which  a 
modem  man  could  not  possibly  believe — they  abound 
in  the  early  writings  of  Jules  Lemaitre — ^all  that  could 
be  hoped  from  them  was  the  piety  of  Renan  which  the 
CathoHcs  of  those  days  resented  as  the  worst  kind  of 
blasphemy.  At  the  present  moment,  graces  of  this 
description  are  left  to  country  school  teachers.  A  man 
in  M.  Aulard's  position  loses,  even  from  the  scientific 
point  of  view,  more  than  is  just,  because  he  will  sport 
in  La  Lanterne  the  wit  of  M.  Cardinal.  Look  over  the 
list  of  the  French  Academy  as  it  stands  to-day  and 
compare  it  with  what  it  was  towards  the  date  of  Renan's 
election;  the  difference  is  startling:  who  are  the  Vol- 
tairians of  the  present  day?    Anatole  France,  of  course, 


The  Church  and  France  275 

but  he  has  given  up  the  Academy  long  ago ;  M.  Lavisse, 
but  how  careful  he  is  not  to  give  any  offence;  M. 
Hanotaux,  but  his  superficial  unbelief  made  room  for 
explicit  belief  in  his  book  on  Jeanne  d'Arc;  M.  Hervieu, 
but  he  never  printed  a  line  against  religion.  The  next 
to  be  quoted  ought  to  be  M.  Richepin,  but  he  would  be 
very  angry  if  anybody  took  the  entirely  literary  violence 
of  his  early  verses  seriously.  And  the  numbering  must 
end  there.  The  thirty-five  other  Academicians  are 
either  practising  Catholics  or  favourable  to  Catholicism. 
This  state  of  affairs  would  be  found  to  be  the  same 
in  all  the  literary  circles  of  Paris,  in  the  lecture-rooms, 
in  the  provincial  universities,  in  the  local  literary 
academies.  Men  inclined  to  speak  harshly  or  satirically 
of  religion  feel  that  it  is  better  form  in  them  to  refrain, 
and  they  do  refrain.  In  order  to  find  exceptions  we  have 
to  go  down  to  TJniversites  Populaires  where  an  un- 
frocked priest  or  a  Syndicalist  with  a  philosophy  may 
innocently  retail  Haeckel  to  a  not  very  enthusiastic 
audience.  The  transformation  obvious  in  Literature  is 
hardly  less  so  in  the  Press.  Apart  from  La  Lanterne, 
1! Homme  Libre — edited  by  M.  Clemenceau — and  pos- 
sibly, on  a  few  occasions,  papers  as  ignored  as  Le  Gil 
Bias  has  become,  the  Parisian  periodicals  have  gradu- 
ally adopted  at  least  an  apparently  sincere  neutrality 
in  religious  matters.  The  radical  suppression  of  any 
anti-Catholic  articles  in  the  Revue  des  Deux-Mondes 
was  the  very  remarkable  forerunner  of  this  change  from 
the  day  when  F.  Brunetiere  took  the  Review  over,  after 
the  death  of  Buloz.  The  Figaro,  the  Eclair j  the  Echo 
de  Paris  are  completely  different  from  their  former 
selves.  The  few  people  who  complain  that  the  stories  in 
Le  Matin  and  Le  Journal  have  become  so  proper  that 
even  girls  may  read  them,  do  not  seem  to  miss  the  old 


276  The  Return  of  the  Light 

anti-Catholic  lampoons  once  habitual  to  these  papers. 
Only  a  few  years  ago  Le  Matin  was  justly  regarded  as 
deliberately  and  craftily  working  against  religion.  The 
appearance  of  the  journal  Excelsior ^  a  Catholic  rival, 
compelled  it  to  adopt  another  policy  which  is  said  to 
have  been  officially  notified  by  the  proprietors  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Paris;  certainly  it  is  a  far  cry  from  the 
miniature  essays  of  M.  Vautel — a  genre  which  suits 
the  French  reader  admirably — to  those  of  the  late  M. 
Harduin  in  point  of  orthodoxy.  The  accomplished  busi- 
ness men  who  conduct  the  paper  are  anti-Christian 
Jews,  no  doubt,  and  this  still  appears  sometimes  too 
clearly;  but  their  commercial  instinct  as  well  as  the 
intelligence  of  some  of  their  subordinates  shows  them 
the  advisability  of  discretion  in  religious  matters.  A 
very  widely  circulated  weekly,  Les  Annates,  edited  by 
Madame  Brisson,  the  daughter  of  the  rabid  anti-clerical 
Sarcey,  having  given  offence  on  a  few  minor  points  to 
CathoHc  readers,  not  only  made  public  amends  for  the 
slip  but  applied  to  the  Paris  Archbishop  for  a  priest 
who  would  correct  the  proofs  from  the  theological 
standpoint.  The  Journal  des  Dehats  has  become  a 
liberal  but  decidedly  Catholic  organ.  Many  such  in- 
stances could  be  quoted.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  no 
popular  journalist  can  be  named  who  is  anti-Catholic 
in  his  writings,  and  the  best  known  of  that  kind,  the 
great  anarchist  of  fifteen  years  ago,  Urbain  Gohier, 
points  out  religion  as  the  only  solution  to  the  moral  and 
the  social  problems  of  to-day.  If  we  look  back  to  the 
history  of  the  past  three  centuries  we  shall  find  that  this 
neutral  or  sympathetic  attitude  of  the  intellectual  ad- 
viser of  the  man  in  the  street  is  an  unheard-of  pheno- 
menon. Since  the  days  of  the  Renaissance  they  have 
been  either  resolute  believers  or  no  less  resolutely* 


The  Church  and  France  277 

though  not  always  openly,  the  reverse.  Broad  re- 
ligiousness in  Frenchmen  grown  up  outside  the  pale  is  a 
feature  of  the  last  few  years,  and  it  shows  that  at  least 
prejudice  has  come  to  a  standstill. 

Parallel  with  this  transformation  is  one  which  was 
inevitable  in  the  public  spirit.  The  violent  hostility 
against  the  Church  which  prevailed  among  the  aristo- 
cracy in  the  days  of  Saint-Evremond  and  Fontenelle 
among  the  upper  bourgeoisie  at  the  time  of  the  Ency- 
clopasdists,  among  the  teaching  body  under  Louis- 
Philippe  and  Napoleon  the  Third,  and  which  finally 
gained  the  lower  strata  under  the  influence  of  Gam- 
betta.  Ferry,  and  Paul  Bert,  has  almost  ceased  to  be 
visible  in  France.  Of  course,  it  still  exists  in  the 
Chamber  among  the  Radicals,  and  in  the  narrow  pro- 
vincial circles  which  keep  Radicalism  alive  against 
the  whole  country  as  four  or  five  Jacobins  would  keep 
up  the  Terror  in  a  town  against  the  whole  population. 
But  you  have  to  look  for  it,  and  its  rampant  attitude 
of  the  days  when  M.  Comtes  was  master  is  only  an 
irritating  memory.  Those  people  have  long  lost  the 
contagiousness  of  faith,  and  all  their  energy  comes  from 
the  desperateness  of  their  greed.  This  cannot  last  long; 
let  any  fortuitous  circumstance  dispel  the  equivocations 
which  are  to-day  their  only  protection,  and  even  the 
pitiably  dog-like  submissiveness  of  the  country  elector 
to  his  master,  good  or  bad,  will  lose  its  last  support. 

The  Freemasons  who  even  in  the  not  far  away  days 
of  the  espionage  system  were  so  much  spoken  about,  so 
dreaded  on  one  side  and  so  courted  on  the  other,  who 
reigned  almost  supreme  in  the  Chamber  and  Senate, 
and  were  not  afraid  of  excommunicating  a  politician 
for  dissenting  from  them  in  a  division,  who  thought 
themselves  so  powerful  that  they  had  finished  by  taking 


278  The  Return  of  the  Light 

pride  in  the  terror  they  caused,  could  hardly  aspire 
nowadays  to  the  r61e  of  scarecrows.  The  Radicals,  it  is 
true,  understudy  them,  but  their  old  parts  are  all  worn 
out,  and  no  amount  of  Masonic  brotherhood  will  give 
freshness  to  denunciations  of  the  Inquisition  when  it  is 
the  Income  Tax  that  is  at  issue.  The  Lodge  as  a  rival 
of  the  Church  has  had  its  time,  and  if  ever  it  resumes 
that  position  it  will  have  to  go  to  school  to  better 
teachers  than  it  used  to  have. 

There  are  no  vestiges  of  the  anti-clerical  feeling 
which  was  positively  in  the  air  as  long  as  the  lower 
classes  identified  social  progress  with  politics,  and 
insisted  on  seeing  in  the  Church  the  last  bulwark  of 
tyranny.  Priests  are  not  popular,  except  in  some  of  the 
poorer  quarters,  but  they  are  no  longer  gibed  at  when 
they  go  about;  no  songs  are  heard  against  them,  and 
when  you  happen — ^perhaps  once  in  a  year — to  see  an 
advertisement  for  some  feuilleton  recalling  the  days 
when  a  Jesuit  was  the  villain  of  the  play,  you  involun- 
tarily wonder  if  it  did  not  get  there  by  mistake.  Even 
Syndicalists  with  the  poor  materialistic  notions  which 
often  accompany  their  social  doctrine  are  only  anti- 
clericals  in  a  sort  of  neutral  way.  They  have  long  ceased 
to  regard  the  idea  of  heaven  as  in  the  way  of  terrestrial 
improvement  and  have  no  more  objection  to  priests 
than  to  astronomers;  their  quarrel  is  with  the  Socialist 
deputies  who  exploit  them  and  with  the  belated  work- 
men who  will  not  increase  their  numbers;  the  Syllabus 
is  nothing  to  them. 

As  to  the  more  refined  circles,  they  affect  the  greatest 
reverence  for  everything  ecclesiastical;  though  a  mild 
indecency  is  rather  the  rule  among  them,  it  is  fashion- 
able not  to  blame  the  Bishops  when  they  blame  the 
tango;  it  is  good  form  on  the  contrary  to  try  to  give 


The  Church  and  France  279 

them  some  sort  of  satisfaction,  were  it  only  by  changing 
the  name  of  the  objectionable  mode  or  pastime,  and  you 
should  see  how  zealously  aspiring  young  hostesses  take 
the  cue. 

Another  very  striking  feature  is  the  reserved  attitude 
of  the  public  with  regard  to  the  internal  divisions  of 
Catholics  about  politics  or  discipline.  At  other  times 
the  newspapers  would  have  been  filled  with  angry  or 
bantering  comments  on  such  questions  as  the  condem- 
nation of  the  Sillon,  the  substitution  of  Pius  the  Tenth's 
indifference  for  Leo  the  Thirteenth's  sympathy  with  the 
Republic,  the  exceptional  mode  of  electing  the  Bishops, 
the  attempts  at  founding  a  Catholic  party,  especially  the 
prohibition  made  to  the  Abb6  Lemire  to  stand  for 
the  Chamber;  now  hardly  anything  is  said  on  those 
subjects.  Is  it  because  the  country  has  become  so  in- 
different that  it  would  not  care  for  discussion?  Or  is  it 
rather  because  there  is  a  sort  of  tacit  understanding 
among  the  French  not  to  make  capital  of  anything 
likely  to  bring  the  Church  once  more  unpleasantly  to 
the  forefront?  The  latter,  no  doubt ;  but  the  reader  will 
see  this  more  clearly  later  on.  For  the  present  I  am 
merely  stating  facts,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  the  old  feeling 
of  hostility  or  superiority  to  the  Church  is  no  longer 
discernible  in  our  atmosphere. 

All  that  I  have  said  so  far  concerned  rather  the 
passive  or  receptive  portions  of  the  country  than  its 
active  influences.  What  of  these?  Are  they  friendly  or 
antagonistic?  What  is  the  attitude  of  people  intelligent 
enough  to  be  interested  in  religious  problems? 

The  honest  answer  is  that  there  is  very  little  said  on 
these  subjects.  Catholics  have  become  reticent  about 
their  theological  views  since  the  publication  of  the 


28o  The  Return  of  the  Light 

Encyclical  against  Modernism.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  young  priests  ordained  in  the  last  seven  or 
eight  years  and  their  predecessors  is  very  great;  the 
latter  were  full  of  the  necessity  of  a  proper  apologetic 
to  influence  the  highly  intellectual  modem  man,  the 
former  are  active  propagandists  of  a  decidedly  pastoral 
type.  Not  one  of  them  has  begun  to  make  his  mark  as 
a  scholar,  but  several  have  attained  to  distinction 
almost  on  leaving  the  seminary,  as  leaders  or  organizers. 
The  great  theological  production  which  we  saw  be- 
tween the  years  1895  and  1905  has  dwindled  down  to 
the  usual  output,  and  nobody,  outside  a  small  circle  of 
men  who  cannot  fancy  the  prospect  of  keeping  their 
manuscripts  under  lock  and  key  after  Horace's  ninth 
year,  seems  to  mind. 

The  same  inactivity  prevails  in  the  opposite  camp. 
A  Catholic  untrained  in  scientific  or  biblical  criticism 
need  not  be  afraid  of  appearing  in  the  circles  in  which 
he  was  sure  not  very  long  ago  to  be  taken  to  task.  His 
former  opponents  have  had  to  make  up  their  minds 
about  the  truth  of  Brunetiere's  once  famous  indictment 
of  Scientism;  it  seems  ludicrous  to-day  that  people 
should  have  expected  the  last  word  on  the  vital  pro- 
blems to  be  said  by  physicists  or  biologists.  Bergson 
and  William  James  have  come,  and  with  the  return  of 
Pluralism  the  sense  of  mystery  has  reappeared,  along 
with  a  lassitude  at  the  mere  idea,  as  Bossuet  says,  of 
everlastingly  seeking  and  never  resting  satisfied.  This 
is  not  the  time  for  speculation.  Philosophizing  de- 
mands peace  and  the  prospect  of  a  long  leisure,  and 
what  everybody  seems  to  be  craving  is  merely  a  little 
truce  and  breathing  space  to  await  less  impatiently  the 
final  settling  of  multiform  difficulties.  The  typical 
positivist  who  could  not  meet  belief  without  challeng- 


The  Church  and  France  281 

ing  it  at  once  to  state  its  reasons  is  a  fossil.  As  to  the 
sceptic  who  disdained  launching  into  discussions  because 
all  creeds  were  absurd,  his  point  of  view  has  changed; 
he  is  as  silent  as  before,  but  his  motive  is  different;  all 
creeds,  he  thinks,  are  wedded  to  insoluble  problems, 
and  he  is  respectful  where  he  used  to  be  supercilious. 

Even  the  war  which  the  Radicals  in  or  out  of  office 
still  wage  against  the  Church  is  not  what  it  used  to  be. 
Of  course,  the  Doumergue  Cabinet  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  gain  a  little  time  and  please  a  few  of  its 
friends  at  a  small  expense  by  suppressing  a  batch  or  two 
of  the  surviving  religious  orders.  M.  Doumergue  also 
repealed  the  two  decrees  taken  under  the  preceding 
Ministry,  concerning  the  rights  of  fathers  to  have  some- 
thing to  say  as  to  the  choice  of  school  books,  and  the 
advisability  for  naval  officers  to  hoist  the  flag  at  mid- 
mast  on  Good  Friday  when  ships  of  other  nations  did 
the  same ;  but  this  is  only  the  ungentlemanliness  of  the 
Radical  who  does  you  a  good  turn  without  loving  you, 
and  an  ill  one  just  because  it  may  please  somebody  else ; 
there  is  no  faith  in  it.  The  moment  there  is  the  least 
appearance  of  a  possible  resistance  no  action  is  taken. 
No  government,  however  Radical,  would  dare  take 
measures  against  the  Catholic  Associations  de  Phres  de 
famille,  or  against  the  Catholic  schools;  the  splendid 
headway  which  persecution  made  under  M.  Combes  is 
lost.  Meanwhile  several  steps  have  been  taken  since 
19 10  which  showed  a  wish  on  the  part  of  the  successive 
governments  to  conciliate  Catholics.  The  courts  have 
invariably  and  with  a  sort  of  complacent  coquetry  given 
proofs  of  impartiality  in  cases  wherein  ecclesiastics  were 
involved,  and  more  than  once  have  taken  Canon  Law 
into  implicit  account ;  the  military  chaplains  have  been 
quietly  reinstated,  at  least  in  case  of  war;  the  Barthou 


282  The  Return  of  the  Light 

Cabinet  refused  to  withhold  the  allowances  granted  to 
the  Beyrout  University  conducted  by  French  Jesuits; 
the  feast  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  has  been  declared  a  national 
festival — sl  measure  which  had  repeatedly  been  thrown 
out  so  far;  finally  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  adduce 
instances  of  collaboration  in  the  Near  East  between  the 
French  and  the  religious  authorities;  the  decoration 
by  the  Government  of  a  Levantine  Bishop,  Monsignor 
Chebli,  and  the  distinctions  given  to  the  Lazarist  Lobry 
by  the  French  Embassy  at  Constantinople  had  a  very 
marked  meaning.  The  universal  feeling  is  that  many  an 
unbelieving  deputy  who  advocated  disestablishment 
would  gladly  undo  what  he  has  done,  if  deputies  could 
make  abstraction  from  the  sordid  sides  of  their  trade. 

As  a  conclusion  we  may  say  that  the  Catholic  Church 
has  fewer  enemies  at  the  present  moment  and  more 
friends  outside  her  own  pale  than  she  has  had  since  the 
lull  after  1848 — ^when  the  feeling  seems  to  have  been 
very  similar,  and  the  moral  atmosphere  which  the 
French  wish  for — when  they  do  not  actually  produce 
it — is  very  like  her  own. 

All  this  is  encouraging,  no  doubt,  but  it  sounds  more 
negative  than  positive,  and  the  reader  may  be  saying 
to  himself  that  the  action  of  the  Church  in  France  is 
more  like  a  magnetic  influence  than  a  visible  interfer- 
ence. This  impression  is  correct;  if  it  were  not,  the 
numerous  English  well-wishfers  of  the  Church  would 
not  ask,  so  anxiously  and  doubtfully,  as  they  generally 
do,  how  she  stands  and  what  are  her  prospects.  It 
would  be  unjust  to  deny  that  she  makes  conquests ;  the 
conversion  of  men  like  Bourget,  Claudel,  Peguy,  Francis 
Jammes,  Psichari,  and  many  imitators  of  less  note  but 
of  intelligence  and  culture,  is  a  tangible  and  very  im- 


The  Church  and  France  283 

pressive  result  of  efforts  in  valuable  quarters,  but  this 
progress  compared  with  the  situation  of  Catholicism 
in  happier  times  or  countries  cannot  be  called  con- 
siderable. Practising  Catholics  are  still  little  more  than 
a  fraction  of  the  French  population,  about  a  third; 
most  French  people  are  christened  and  buried  by  a 
priest,  but  between  those  two  terms  they  stay  away, 
and  their  ignorance  and  indifference  are  appalling; 
politically  speaking,  their  numbers  are  so  small  that 
one  had  better  not  mention  them.  So,  compared  with 
the  position  of  their  co-religionists  in  Germany,  Bel- 
gium, or  even  in  the  United  States,  the  French  Catho- 
lics not  only  have  no  power,  which  goes  without  saying, 
but  they  have  hardly  any  weight ;  there  is  not  one  con- 
stituency in  twenty  in  which  they  can  control  an 
election.  They  begin  indeed  to  have  their  own  Press. 
The  Croix  is  one  of  the  big  dailies,  and  several  provin- 
cial papers  are  so  thriving  as  to  appear  comparatively 
influential,  and  yet  influential  they  seldom  are  outside 
the  few  countrysides  I  have  just  referred  to ;  or  if  they 
are,  it  is  by  showing  their  conservative  rather  than 
their  religious  tendencies.  As  a  body  of  men  with  whom 
the  leaders  of  the  great  political  factions  have  to  reckon, 
therefore,  they  hardly  count.  Being  scattered,  that  is 
to  say  unable  to  show  anything  like  an  imposing  front 
in  an  emergency,  they  are  practically  invisible,  and  this 
accounts  for  the  ignorance  of  them  in  which  even  well- 
informed  and  travelled  foreigners  remain. 

It  would  be  more  than  unjust  to  say  that  the  Church 
of  France  is,  in  her  active  representatives,  below  par. 
Her  clergy  have  never  been  more  regular;  in  a  great 
many  places  they  live  in  circumstances  which  would 
revolt  even  their  poorest  peasants,  and  they  never  say 
a  word;  they  work  and  persevere  with  a  simple  cheer- 


284  The  Return  of  the  Light 

fulness  which  often  strikes  as  perfectly  heroic  if  one 
remembers  that  the  hope  of  better  days  does  not  even 
begin  to  dawn ;  the  seminaries  are  wonderfully  managed 
considering  the  difficulties  their  rectors  have  had  to 
encounter,  losing  their  professors  in  a  great  many 
dioceses  after  the  expulsion  of  the  religious  orders,  and 
having  to  vacate  their  houses  everywhere  after  the 
Separation;  the  teaching  is  on  an  average  better  than 
it  was,  and  the  spirit  of  the  young  men  is  exactly  what 
the  Bishops  want  it  to  be;  discipline  seems  much  more 
natural  to  them  than  to  the  preceding  generation.  As 
to  the  religious  communities  which  survive  on  semi- 
tolerance  or  are  dispersed  and  awaiting  the  chance  of 
reforming,  it  is  too  heart-rending  to  think  of  their 
hardships  to  weaken  them  by  expression.  A  great  book 
could  be  made  by  most  of  us  merely  collecting  the 
instances  of  simple  courage  which  have  come  to  our 
personal  knowledge.  But  all  this  expense  of  patience 
in  numberless  forms  is  himible  and  unknown;  it  keeps 
the  Church  alive,  but  the  effort  is  unperceived  and  the 
results  are  obscure.  Certainly  many  people,  friends  or 
foes,  were  surprised  at  seeing  the  Church  survive  when 
her  ruin  had  been  looked  upon  as  a  matter  of  course,  but 
her  existence  is,  as  might  have  been  expected,  without 
6clat.  The  roll  of  her  famous  men  is  short.  There  may 
be  somewhere  a  country  priest  as  holy  as  the  cur6 
d'Ars  was  sixty  years  ago,  but  no  prodigies  are  worked 
in  his  little  church,  and  we  do  not  see  pilgrims  from 
every  part  of  Europe  flock  to  his  confessional.  The  last 
mystic  writers  worth  the  name — and  how  inferior  to 
Olier! — ^were  Monseigneur  Gay  and  Pere  Libermann. 
We  do  not  see  any  great  bishops  with  genius  enough 
and  eloquence  enough  to  play  the  part  of  Pie  or  Du- 
panloup.     The  preachers  we  hear  are  good  and  holy, 


The  Church  and  France  285 

they  tend  toward  that  simplicity  which  is  the  condition 
of  efficiency,  but  how  far  they  are  from  a  Lacordaire, 
even  a  Ravignan!  Their  fame  seldom  travels  beyond 
the  few  churches  in  which  they  periodically  appear. 
What  Catholic  writer  can  we  place  beside  Veuillot?  It 
is  a  strange  thing  that  the  literary  champions  of  the 
Church,  men  of  the  type  of  Bourget,  Bazin,  Bordeaux, 
or  the  poets  Claudel  or  Jammes,  should  be  laymen 
rather  than  ecclesiastics,  and  that  the  most  eloquent 
of  all,  the  advocate  of  the  country  churches,  Maurice 
Barres,  should  not  be  a  believer  at  all !  The  only  realm 
in  which  Catholics  achieve  distinction  is,  in  spite  of  the 
rarefaction  I  have  mentioned  above,  ecclesiastical  erudi- 
tion. The  Dictionnaire  de  la  Foi  Catholique,  the 
Dictionnaire  de  la  Bible^  the  Dictionnaire  d'ApologetiquCj 
the  Dictionnaire  d' Archeologie  Chretienne^  the  Diction- 
naire d'Histoire  Ecclesiastique  in  process  of  publication 
or  just  published  are  great  undertakings,  and  the  names 
of  the  Abbes  Batiffol,  Touzard,  Tixeront,  Jacquier, 
Saltet,  Michelet,  of  the  Dominicans,  Lagrange,  Vin- 
cent, Dhorme,  of  the  Jesuits,  Lebreton,  Prat,  De 
Grandmaison,  Condamin,  and  Cavallera,  are  greatly 
respected.  But  outside  a  small  circle  of  specialists 
who  knows  either  the  works  or  the  names? 

It  is  not  surprising  therefore  that  the  Church  should 
be  almost  hidden  in  France.  No  numbers,  no  social 
or  political  power,  no  fascination  of  great  talents,  all 
these  negations  combine  in  making  her  position  one  of 
great  possibilities  rather  than  achievements.  And  it  is 
not  surprising  either  that  without  some  guidance  and 
proper  illumination  outsiders  should  have  no  idea  of 
her  situation. 

We  are  therefore  placed  before  this  apparent  paradox : 
a  Church  destitute  of  every  means  for  captivating  the 


286  The  Return  of  the  Light 

imagination  and  working  upon  hesitating  wills,  and  a 
country  which  fifteen  years  ago  rebelled  against  it  in 
every  possible  way  now  showing  its  influence  in  all  the 
manifestations  of  its  inner  life. 

Paradoxes  in  real  life  do  not  exist;  they  are  only 
logical  paradoxes  with  which  our  astonishment  at  some- 
thing unexpected  will  amuse  itself.  It  goes  without 
saying  that  the  Church  in  her  present  reduced  condition 
in  no  wise  recalls  the  powerful  society  she  was  in  the 
thirteenth  century ;  but  were  she  a  thousand  times  more 
overshadowed  in  France  than  she  is  at  present,  it 
would  not  prevent  her  from  being  an  irresistible  force. 
Was  there  a  great  deal  of  real  antagonism  in  this 
country  when  persecution  was  raging?  Everybody 
acquainted  with  the  true  feelings  of  the  French  knows 
that  there  was  not.  Anti-clericalism  was  political,  and 
it  never  spread  far  outside  poHtical  circles.  Let  this 
kind  of  politics  wear  itself  out,  and  anti-clericalism  was 
sure  to  pall.  Let  the  quiet  indifference  of  the  bourgeois 
be  alarmed  at  the  sight  of  confiscations,  and  anti- 
clericalism  was  sure  to  become  frightening.  Let  the 
intelligence  of  the  cultured  get  a  surfeit  of  materialistic 
confidence,  of  ever-disappointing  promises  to  explain 
or  explain  away  everything,  and  sympathy  with  mys- 
teries was  bound  to  succeed  the  craving  after  too 
simple  theories.  Let  a  great  national  shock  like  the 
Tangier  affair  bring  home  to  millions  of  patriots  the 
necessity  of  being  united  instead  of  persecuting  one 
another,  and  the  idea  of  petty  molestations  could  not 
but  become  sickening. 

All  the  possibilities  of  anti-clericalism  lie  in  certain 
memories  and  certain  fears.  The  memories  are  not,  as 
people  will  often  imagine,  those  of  the  Ancien  Regime; 
these  are  quite  forgotten.    But  there  are  still  men  who 


The  Church  and  France  287 

remember  the  state  of  affairs  described  in  Taine*s  early 
letters,  and  against  which  he  is  never  tired  of  inveigh- 
ing. Their  fear  is  of  a  Church  powerful  enough  to 
control  civil  power,  or  possibly  to  present  mysticism 
too  universally.  Take  away  that  fear,  and  the  French- 
man of  to-day,  like  his  ancestors — the  mediaeval  man 
and  the  critical  seventeenth-century  scholar — leans 
immediately  towards  the  Church;  for  on  one  hand  he 
may  dislike  dry  theology,  but  he  loves  directing  his 
actions  by  the  light  of  a  fixed  doctrine,  and  on  the  other 
he  cannot  possibly  sever  morals  from  its  religious  basis. 
Now  it  matters  little  whether  the  Church  is  strong  and 
numerous  or  weak  and  scanty ;  the  Frenchman  does  not 
look  upon  her  as  a  body,  the  object  of  the  statistician's 
or  the  social  philosopher's  study — all  these  details  he 
ignores — she  is  part  of  his  traditional  life,  and  when  he 
goes  back  to  her,  it  is  as  a  man  goes  back  to  his  earliest 
experience.  Indeed,  as  unreasoned  as  a  natural  process 
is  the  movement  towards  Christianity  we  are  witness- 
ing ;  it  ought  not  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  passage  of  a 
man  from  a  house  to  another  house,  but  as  the  gradual 
and  almost  unconscious  return  of  a  family  to  a  disused 
but  very  convenient  room.  Criticalness  is  totally 
absent  from  it. 

The  question  naturally  arises:  What  is  the  Church 
doing  in  the  obscure  condition  which  has  just  been 
described?  Even  if  she  is  not  very  active  in  France  as  a 
body,  she  must  have  some  sort  of  activity  of  which 
individuals  at  least  cannot  but  be  aware,  and  the 
knowledge  of  which  is  sure  to  make  the  present  more 
intelligible  and  the  future  easier  to  foresee. 

A  brief  summary  will  help  the  reader  to  realize  how 
far  the  Church  does  influence  individuals,  and  to  what 


288  The  Return  of  the  Light 

extent  she  is  even  beginning  to  make  her  presence  felt 
in  the  State  in  her  new  situation  as  an  independent 
community. 

Everybody  knows  that  Napoleon's  Concordat  with 
Pope  Pius  the  Sixth  worked  in  two  ways.  After  nearly 
ten  years'  disappearance  it  restored  the  Church  to  an 
official  position,  but  this  Church  had  been  so  diminished 
during  the  Revolution,  she  had  lost  so  completely  the 
wealth,  knowledge,  and  corporate  traditions  which  had 
given  her  independence  even  under  Louis  the  Four- 
teenth, that  the  State  must  inevitably  have  the  upper 
hand  over  her.  The  consequence  was  that  when  the 
State  was  favourably  disposed  towards  her,  as  under 
the  Restoration,  or  in  the  early  part  of  the  Second 
Empire,  she  appeared  powerful  and  prosperous ;  when 
on  the  contrary  the  civil  power  was  jealous  of  her,  as 
under  Louis-Philippe,  or  really  hostile,  as  during  the 
Third  Republic,  she  seemed  to  be  despised.  In  either 
case  everybody  was  conscious  that  she  was  dependent, 
and  being  dependent  she  had  no  enterprise  and  but 
little  energy.  The  Bishops,  being  appointed  by  the 
Government,  were  often  reduced  to  the  humiliating 
position  of  "prefects  in  purple";  they  were  carefully 
kept  isolated,  commimicating  with  Rome  under  difficul- 
ties, and  hardly  at  all  between  themselves;  the  priests 
also  were  mostly  appointed  and  always  maintained  by 
the  State;  their  churches  and  houses  were  not  on  their 
hands;  so  though  poor  they  lived  an  easy  peaceful  life; 
their  flocks  saw  them  through  the  haze  of  ancient  habit 
or  ancient  prejudice,  as  institutions  rather  than  persons, 
and  respect  rather  than  obedience  was  the  keynote  of 
their  intercourse;  besides,  the  rectors,  apart  from 
exceptional  periods  when  Government  used  them  as 
political  delegates,  seldom  demanded  obedience;    the 


The  Church  and  France  289 

tradition  since  the  Concordat  was  for  them  to  stay 
at  home  a  great  deal,  and  when  the  times  were  against 
them  they  merely  took  refuge  in  the  hope  of  a  "good 
Government.'* 

All  this  means  that  their  attitude  was  on  the  whole 
unimpeachable,  but  differed  entirely  from  that  of  the 
really  influential  clergy  as  seen  in  Germany,  Belgium, 
Ireland,  Canada,  and  the  United  States. 

It  is  not  surprising  therefore  that  they  should  have 
been  inclined  to  accept  the  Separation  Law  when  it 
was  passed  in  1905,  and  that  they  should  have  been 
somewhat  bewildered  when,  the  year  after,  Pope  Pius 
the  Tenth  imposed  upon  them  the  virile  but  unexpected 
course  of  not  accepting  it.  The  consequence  was 
liberty,  but  liberty  with  all  its  burdens.  Bishops  with 
not  a  farthing  of  the  old  Church  property  left  found 
themselves  confronted  with  the  necessity  of  procuring 
accommodation  for  their  seminarians,  and  money 
enough  to  keep  their  priests;  poor  country  rectors  in 
poorer  neighbourhoods  were  turned  out  of  their  houses 
and  had  not  only  to  look  after  themselves  but  to  pro- 
vide for  the  expenditure  involved  in  the  worship.  For 
the  first  time  since  the  very  beginnings  of  the  Church 
in  Merovingian  Gaul,  the  French  clergy  had  to  seek  an 
economic  basis  for  an  existence  which  had  been  purely 
spiritual  because  it  was  perfectly  secure. 

It  seemed  strange  at  first  to  see  the  priests  going 
from  house  to  house  collecting  money  for  the  Denier  du 
Culte,  Money  plays  in  the  life  of  the  French  peasant 
so  important  a  part  that  it  is  proverbial,  but  money 
transactions  are  generally  buried  in  deep  secrecy,  and 
it  was  a  shock  to  see  the  man  who  for  ages  had  been  the 
most  remote  from  anything  worldly  engaged  in  financial 
manoeuvring  before  the  eyes  of  a  whole  parish.  Yet  the 
19 


290  The  Return  of  the  Light 

tradition  is  established  already;  the  comparatively 
small  amount  necessary  to  secure  for  each  priest  the 
thirty  to  forty  pounds  with  which  he  is  satisfied  is 
found  in  almost  every  diocese,  and  one  immediate 
result  of  applying  to  the  faithful  for  assistance  was  to 
make  them  feel,  for  the  first  time,  an  interest  in  the  life 
of  their  Church,  and  to  render  Catholic  Associations 
possible.  They  now  exist  in  every  diocese,  and  except- 
ing the  well-known  countrysides  in  Central  France  in 
which  religious  indifference  is  the  rule,  practically  in 
every  parish.  The  old  vestry  councils  have  been  re- 
placed by  more  active  committees,  no  longer  exclusively 
consulted  on  parochial  expenses,  but  interested  in 
religious  progress  generally,  and  comparing  notes  in 
occasional  congresses.  The  anti-clericalism  of  a  great 
many  school  teachers  almost  automatically  produced 
the  creation  of  Associations  de  Peres  de  famille^  which 
only  see  that  the  books  used  and  the  teaching  given  do 
not  exceed  the  limits  of  neutrality,  but  which  the  evi- 
dent purity  of  their  point  of  view  has  made,  from  the 
first,  exceptionally  influential.  In  the  richer  or  more 
religious  dioceses  there  exists  a  certain  number  of 
Catholic  schools  which  the  State  not  only  does  not  help 
but  tries — vainly  enough,  it  must  be  confessed — to 
suppress  or  impede.  Wherever  such  a  school  can  be 
founded  the  parochial  life  shows  remarkable  intensity. 
Women  have  done  more  than  the  men  for  the  re- 
organization of  the  Church.  The  Ligue  Patriotique  des 
Frangaises  numbers  more  than  half  a  million  women 
who  have  managed  so  far  to  keep  away  from  politics, 
and  show  unparalleled  activity.  Very  few  are  the 
villages  in  which  they  do  not  help  the  priest  in  hearing 
the  children  their  Catechism,  and  every  now  and  then 
do  not  get  some  Parisian  lady  member  to  give  a  public 


The  Church  and  France  291 

lecture  in  a  hired  room,  a  great  novelty  and  a  great 
attraction  in  rural  districts,  where  the  kinematograph 
only  begins  to  penetrate.  In  most  of  the  larger  villages 
the  priests  have  been  able  to  build  a  special  room  for 
such  entertainments,  and  the  presence  of  this  building, 
which  is  the  first  visible  evidence  of  Catholic  activity 
in  its  new  form,  strikes  the  rustic  mind  more  than  any- 
thing else.  I  have  seen  people  comment  excitedly  on 
the  appearance  outside  a  railway  station  of  a  plain 
house  destined  for  the  Catholic  railwaymen.  The 
superb  churches  or  schools  which  they  might  have 
admired  a  few  years  ago,  and  which  had  also  been  built 
from  private  subscriptions,  did  not  strike  the  popular 
imagination  so  vividly  as  the  prosaic  sign  implying  that 
railwaymen  are  not  afraid  of  calling  themselves  be- 
lievers. Wherever  there  is  a  beginning  of  organization, 
something  to  show,  as  the  humble  propagandists  put 
it,  the  clergy  find  it  easy  enough  to  bring  together  a 
number  of  individuals  whom  mere  preaching  used  never 
to  reach.  In  many  industrial  towns,  where  the  men  are 
naturally  grouped  by  their  work,  it  is  not  exceptional  at 
Easter  to  see  no  less  than  seven  or  eight  himdred  men 
in  church  together.  These  results,  brought  about  by 
the  gradual  employment  of  association — a  discovery  of 
yesterday  in  France — and  by  the  inevitable  contact  of 
the  priests  with  their  people,  are  of  course  very  local 
and  hardly  perceptible  outside  the  parish,  but  they 
are  the  real  commencement  of  Catholic  life  as  distin- 
guished from  the  mere  Catholic  tradition,  and  as  such 
are  highly  interesting  to  record,  only  eight  years  after 
the  Disestablishment. 

Besides  activity  on  the  lines  of  association,  there  is 
another  great  feature  which  I  can  say  to  be  characteris- 
tic of  post-Separation  Catholicism:  that  is  rigidly  en- 


292  The  Return  of  the  Light 

forced  concentration.  This  concentration,  needless  to 
say,  is  the  work  of  Rome,  and  Pope  Pius  the  Tenth  is 
largely  responsible  for  it.  It  was  the  Pope  who,  in 
1906,  decided  that  the  Separation  Law  should  not  be 
accepted,  and  several  measures — the  direct  appoint- 
ment of  the  Bishops  by  Rome,  for  instance,  and  the 
postponement  of  plenary  assemblies  of  the  French  epis- 
copate— were  evidently  intended  to  keep  the  French 
clergy  immediately  under  the  influence  of  the  Papacy. 
The  Roman  authorities  probably  thought  it  wiser  that 
the  French  clergy,  so  long  used  to  the  tutelage  of  the 
State,  should  not  be  left  too  much  to  themselves,  during 
these  first  few  years  after  their  liberation. 

It  is  needless  to  recall  that  the  war  waged  against 
Modernism  showed  the  same  protecting  spirit,  but  the 
opposition  made  by  Rome  to  what  is  called  inter- 
confessionalism  may  be  less  known;  the  condemnation 
of  the  Sillofij  the  prohibition  made  to  clerics  against 
attending  lectures  in  the  State  universities,  the  con- 
demnation of  the  Maison  Sociale  founded  by  the  well- 
known  Sister  Mercedes,  had  no  other  object  than  to 
keep  Catholics  among  themselves,  and  discourage  them 
from  joining,  qua  Catholics,  even  excellent  works 
initiated  by  other  communions  or  merely  undenomina- 
tional. Clearly  the  wish  of  the  Pope  is  for  Catholics  to 
appear  before  the  world  as  primarily  believers. 

It  was  inevitable  that  such  a  policy  should  find 
exaggerated  and  consequently  dangerous  champions. 
Half  a  score  of  men,  most  of  them  jotmialists,  and  all  of 
them  arrogating  to  themselves  the  mission  they  take, 
sometimes  very  doubtful  morally  but  invariably  loud, 
have  had  no  difficulty  in  bullying  the  Church  of  France 
in  the  name  of  obedience  to  the  Pope,  inventing  new 
heresies,  charging  their  opponents  with  Episcopalism 


The  Church  and  France  293 

when  they  could  not  accuse  them  of  Modernism  or 
LiberaHsm,  abusing  people  worthy  of  all  respect,  one 
after  the  other,  until  they  came  to  speak  of  the  Count 
de  Mun  as  a  dangerous  Liberal,  and  to  denounce 
learned  Jesuits  as  Modernists  in  disguise.  This  crew — 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  one  of  them  was  found  to'be  a 
hypocrite  leading  the  loosest  life  while  affecting  ortho- 
doxy, and  finally  getting  turned  out  of  his  order  and 
reappearing  the  next  day  as  an  agnostic  journalist — 
might  have  gone  on  spreading  terror  through  the 
Episcopate  and  the  Catholic  Press,  if  the  Jesuits  on  the 
staff  of  the  Etudes  Religieuses  had  not  published'  a 
powerful  article  which,  although  written  in  self-de- 
fence, was  nevertheless  a  general  indictment.  This 
article  produced  universal  relief,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  henceforward  the  Bishops,  and  not  a  handful  of 
cowardly  bullies,  will  interpret  the  Pope's  policy  for 
the  Church  of  France. 

Is  there  anything  like  a  definite  political  action  of  the 
French  clergy?  No.  Pius  the  Tenth  differed  from  his 
predecessor  insomuch  as  he  did  not  recommend  ad- 
hesion to  the  Republican  constitution,  but  he  did  not 
recommend  any  constitution  whatever.  He  insisted 
on  Catholics  preserving  their  political  liberty,  and  being 
at  will  Republicans,  Monarchists,  or  Imperialists,  so 
long  as  they  promoted  the  Catholic  liberties.  This 
evidently  cannot  serve  as  a  basis  for  any  popular 
politics  that  might  be  called  Catholic.  But  nobody  is 
sorry.  Practising  Catholics  who  are  numerous  enough 
to  maintain  the  moral  influence  of  their  Church  in 
France  are  not  numerous  enough  nor  politically  imited 
enough  to  appear  at  any  advantage  at  an  election. 

» Vide  Etudes  Religieuses,  5  Janvier  191 4. 


294  The  Return  of  the  Light 

The  attempt  made  by  two  very  good  men,  Colonel 
Keller  and  M.  de  Bellomayre,  to  found  a  Catholic 
party  that  would  be  a  real  party,  was  a  woeful  failure. 
So  the  French  Catholics  have  no  political  programme. 
There  may  be  a  few  Bishops  who  are  personally  Mon- 
archists, and  the  general  disaffection  with  the  Republic 
throughout  the  country  has  certainly  cooled  the  loyalist 
enthusiasm  which  greeted  Leo  the  Thirteenth's  adhe- 
sion to  the  regime;  also  the  slow  but  steady  antagonism 
against  the  ideas,  dreams,  and  vague  modes  of  speech 
of  the  French  Revolution  which  has  been  the  fashion 
since  Taine  amounts  to  a  perpetual  criticism  of  the 
Democracy,  and  Catholics  hear  it  as  everybody  else; 
but  all  this  is  not  enough  to  make  unity  where  there 
is  variety,  and  only  Radicals  can  seriously  denounce 
clericalism  where  they  see  reaction.  Only  in  two 
points  have  the  Bishops  conducted  a  resistance — which 
proved  successful — against  certain  provincial  news- 
papers like  the  Diptche  of  Toulouse,  and  against  the 
selection  by  school  teachers  of  anti-Catholic  books. 
There  was  no  question  of  the  Republican  constitution 
there,  and  the  Bishops  were  helped  in  their  campaign 
by  notoriously  Republican  organs. 

One  might  go  into  many  more  details;  the  school 
question  alone  would  require  a  long  chapter  to  be 
presented  in  its  entirety,  but  details  are  not  necessary 
for  my  present  purpose,  which  is  merely  to  ascertain 
how  far  the  moral  trend  of  France  is  influenced  by  the 
progress  of  the  Church,  and  on  the  contrary  they  might 
impair  the  clearness  of  our  vision.  In  troubled  periods 
like  this,  details  often  take  an  undue  importance  and 
mislead  rather  than  enlighten.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the 
Church  not  only  has  survived  the  crisis  in  which  she 
was  expected  to  perish,  but  that  she  is  doing  better 


The  Church  and  France  295 

than  she  did  for  a  long  time,  having  galvanized  dor- 
mant forces,  and  living  as  near  as  possible  to  her 
spiritual  ideal.  Slowly  and  silently  she  grows  used  to 
her  new  conditions  and  becomes  conscious  of  her  new 
self.  She  has  no  wide  designs,  no  sublime  conquering 
prospects;  her  members  are  too  much  occupied  with 
trivial  problems  which  have  to  be  solved  day  after  day, 
for  any  of  them  to  reveal  the  outlook  of  a  Saint  Bernard. 
So  she  goes  on,  cheerful  and  childlike  as  usual  in  the 
everyday  life  of  her  members,  guarded  behind  a  pro- 
tecting zone  of  strict  theology  in  her  corporate  existence. 
But  of  all  this  the  "world"  outside  is  ignorant,  facing 
its  own  difficulties  and  viewing  the  Church  as  a  home 
tradition,  not  at  all  as  a  society  in  the  making;  its 
development  and  her  development  are  parallel  pheno- 
mena with  hardly  any  contact. 

What  the  future  will  be  it  would  be  futile  to  prophesy. 
Who  can  tell  whether  the  present  mood  of  France  is  a 
beginning  or  only  a  phase?  Materialism  as  a  philosophi- 
cal doctrine  is  outlived  undoubtedly,  and  patriotism 
takes  in  numberless  instances  the  Christian  form  of  self- 
denial.  But  who  would  be  sanguine  enough  to  read  in 
these  changes  a  return  to  the  Gospel  and  its  detach- 
ment from  the  earth?  The  Bishops  complain  that 
vocations  to  the  priesthood  are  becoming  rarer  every- 
where, and  some  people  account  for  the  decrease  by  the 
military  laws,  and  by  the  timidity  which  the  persecu- 
tion of  ten  years  ago  left  in  the  minds  of  Catholic 
parents.  But  is  this  a  sufficient  explanation?  Is  it  not 
true  that  the  self-indulgence  which  has  come  every- 
where along  with  improved  economic  conditions,  and 
with  everlasting  discussions  about  man's  rights  apart 
from  his  duties,  is  becoming  universal  ?  Is  it  not  possi- 
ble that  the  decrease  in  clerical  vocations  arises  from 


296  The  Return  of  the  Light 

gradual  resistance  to  one  of  the  strictest  injunctions  of 
the  Church,  and  that  this  problem  is  intimately  bound 
with  the  larger  question  of  depopulation?  Families 
with  one  child  will  hardly  dedicate  their  one  son  to  the 
service  of  the  Church,  nor  will  the  Church  be  much  in- 
clined to  look  to  such  for  her  ministers  or  even  cham- 
pions. There  is  little  doubt  but  this  will  be  the  crux  of 
the  near  future;  Catholic  theology  offers  no  loop-hole 
of  escape,  and  yet  the  inclination  to  forget  it  appears 
universal.  If  this  inclination  becomes  stronger,  not 
only  will  the  difficulty  to  keep  up  the  numbers  of  the 
clergy  grow  worse  and  worse,  but  the  quality  of  the 
Catholic  family  will  deteriorate,  for  subtle  selfishness 
corrupts  all  that  is  more  characteristically  Christian, 
and  only  leaves  intact  respectable  conformity.  Eco- 
nomism,  with  its  multiform  consequences,  undoubtedly 
is  the  most  terrible  obstacle  that  Christianity  has  as 
yet  encountered,  and  minor  phenomena  are  merely 
indications  of  its  magnitude. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  a  saint  may  arise.  There  is 
enough  self-forgetfulness  bordering  on  heroism  in  the 
devotion  of  the  clergy  to  their  work  to  make  the  hope  a 
probability,  and  who  can  foretell  the  effect  on  a  genera- 
tion which  may  abhor  poverty,  but  does  not  seem 
afraid  of  death  in  the  cause  of  an  ideal?  Certainly  the 
hope  of  the  future  does  not  lie  to-day — as  it  did  in  the 
not  remote  past  when  everything  was  hanging  on 
intelligence  and  theories — in  an  adaptation  of  belief  to 
science,  but  in  the  superiority  of  belief  as  a  source  of 
heroism  over  the  mediocrity  of  economic  philosophies. 
The  sight  of  a  saint  might  change  into  religious  abnega- 
tion the  energies  which  are  so  far  limited  to  patriotic 
courage.  We  can  only  wish  and  hope,  but  it  is  a  fortu- 
nate coincidence  that  just  when  France  as  a  nation 


The  Church  and  France  297 

feels  the  need  of  an  uplifting  faith  the  depositary  of  the 
ancestral  creed  should  be  through  persecution  and  pov- 
erty as  pure  a  medium  as  can  well  be  imagined.  This 
at  least  is  a  fact,  if  all  the  rest  be  only  hopes,  and  it  is 
speaking  from  the  mere  historic  standpoint  to  say  that 
the  Church  seldom,  if  ever,  had  such  rare  opportunities. 


DIVISION  B. — ^MORE  CONSCIOUS  MANIFESTATIONS  OF  THE 
NEW  SPIRIT 

I.     The  Return  of  French  Literature  to  its  Traditional 

Spirit 

That  there  is  an  ethical  change  not  only  in  French 
literature,  but  in  the  French  press  and  in  the  French 
spirit  generally,  is  a  fact  which  I  have  shown  in  previous 
chapters;  what  I  wish  to  investigate  is  whether,  along- 
side of  this  moral  and  probably  pragmatic  change, 
there  is  not  another,  of  a  purely  intellectual  or  artistic 
character,  which  would  matter  even  more ;  for  nations, 
like  individuals,  will  sometimes  feel  that  it  is  useful  for 
them  to  act  right,  whereas  thinking  right  is  a  vital 
process  through  which  they  cannot  go  at  will,  and  the 
consequences  of  which  are  immeasurably  further- 
reaching. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  French  think  more  according 
to  their  tradition  and  temperament  at  the  present 
moment  than  they  have  done  for  a  long  period. 

Let  any  Englishman  ask  himself  what  the  word 
French  connotes  in  his  mind;  I  am  certain  that  in 
nineteen  cases  out  of  twenty  he  will  find  that  it  is 
intelligence,  wit,  brilliance,  a  certain  dash,  a  certain 
outspokenness  of  a  very  decided  character,  a  gift  for 
clarity  in  expression,  a  natural  balance,  an  aversion 
for  obscurity  and  exaggeration.     As  he  reviews  these 

298 


Literature  Traditional  Again         299 

characteristics,  there  are  others  which  he  resolutely 
discards:  depth,  the  working  everyday  variety  of  com- 
mon sense,  the  proportion  between  object  and  method 
which  constitutes  practicalness — above  all,  the  inclina- 
tion towards  a  richer  if  less  definite  apprehension  of 
spiritual  realities  which  in  one  of  its  aspects  is  religion 
and  in  the  other,  poetry.  Of  course  it  will  be  found  that 
this  view  of  the  French  nature  not  only  does  not  apply 
to  every  representative  French  individual,  but  even 
does  not  cover  every  period  in  the  history  of  French 
thought;  I  feel  convinced  that  the  idea  of  the  French 
temperament  almost  universal  in  England  has  been 
abstracted  mostly  during  the  two  periods  in  which 
Englishmen  seem  to  have  derived  most  pleasure  from 
living  in  Paris,  viz.,  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
most  brilliant  years  of  the  Second  Empire — the  time 
of  Chesterfield  and  Walpole,  and  that  of  Sir  Richard 
Wallace. 

Now  what  Walpole  appreciated  in  the  countrymen 
of  Voltaire  was  not  by  any  means  that  in  them  which 
was  paving  the  way  for  the  Revolution,  but  rather  the 
reverse;  what  the  brilliant  English  colony  in  the  Paris 
of  i860  loved  was  not  the  sober  philosophy  of  Taine, 
no  matter  how  English  in  its  parentage,  but  the  frothy 
spirit  rife  on  the  boulevards,  and  this  evidently  was 
rather  a  restricted  view.  Pascal,  Racine,  Bossuet,  the 
great  French  scientists,  the  great  French  inventors, 
can  no  more  be  left  out  of  an  estimate  of  the  French 
genius  than  Shelley  can  be  ignored  by  a  Frenchman 
trying  to  see  how  far  poeticalness  is  associated  with  the 
matter-of-fact  genius  of  England.  Yet  the  notion 
which  we  form  to  ourselves  of  a  people  foreign  to  us  is, 
as  a  rule,  the  product  of  the  consciousness  and  pride  of 
that  people  itself  rather  than  an  abstraction  of  our 


300  The  Return  of  the  Light 

mind.  The  Frenchman  pleases  the  Englishman  when 
he  ascribes  sound  common  sense  to  him,  and  he  in  his 
turn  feels  that  the  Englishman  is  right  in  thinking  of 
the  French  as  mostly  a  clear-headed  nation  with  more 
logic  than  imagination.  It  is  with  these  notions  as  a 
background  that,  comparing  the  nineteenth  century 
with  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth,  we  can  pronounce 
the  latter  to  be,  on  the  whole,  more  obviously  French 
than  the  former. 

The  nineteenth  century  can  be  described  as  the  age 
of  Romanticism  and  Naturalism,  and  neither  the 
Romanticists  nor  the  Naturalists  seem  unmistakably 
French.  Victor  Hugo  and  his  contemporaries  offer  a 
new  type  in  the  history  of  French  literature.  Not  that 
in  many  parts  of  their  productions  they  do  not  voice 
feelings  deeply  seated  in  the  national  soul,  and  per- 
ceptible, say,  in  the  poems  of  Villon  or  in  the  mediaeval 
epics,  but  their  literary  ethos  is  a  novelty.  The 
national  characteristics  before  them  had  been  summed 
up  in  La  Fontaine's  couplet: 

Ne  forgons  point  notre  talent, 
Nous  ne  ferions  rien  avec  grace. 

There  were  ease  and  balance  in  the  French  writers 
of  every  degree,  from  Bossuet  down.  Nobody  seemed 
anxious  not  only  to  appear,  but  even  to  make  himself, 
more  gifted  than  he  naturally  was;  there  was  in  litera- 
ture a  sort  of  hierarchy — based  on  admiration  for 
others,  to  be  sure,  but  also  on  self-respect — which  was 
not  its  least  charm. 

Now  when  we  read  George  Sand,  Michelet,  Balzac — 
that  is  to  say,  the  great  Romanticists — and  especially 
the  greatest  of  all,  Victor  Hugo,  we  are  everlastingly 


Literature  Traditional  Again         301 

conscious  of  a  contradiction.  Here  is  wonderful  facility 
and  versatility,  an  immense  production  which  ought  to 
suggest  enjoyment  quite  as  much  as  labour,  and  yet  we 
cannot  get  rid  of  an  uncomfortable  impression  that 
under  this  activity  there  was  an  effort.  Not  one  line  of 
Voltaire  or  Diderot  ever  produces  this  effect,  and 
almost  every  line  of  Victor  Hugo  does.  Giants  as  he 
and  his  compeers  were,  they  all  look  like  Sisyphus.  All 
their  lives  they  tried  to  be  more  than  they  were,  to 
achieve  more  than  they  could  do.  They  were  all  of 
them  hypnotized  by  a  notion,  which  they  had  made 
for  themselves,  of  what  genius  is.  Instead  of  seeing 
genius  as  a  possibility  and  a  more  or  less  frequent 
realization,  they  woiild  imagine  it  as  a  permanent 
mental  condition — ^in  their  own  language,  they  per- 
suaded themselves  that  Dante  or  Shakespeare  was  as 
continuously  Dante  or  Shakespeare  as  an  Alp,  a  Pyra- 
mid, or  a  Cathedral  is  what  it  is,  and  they  strove  to 
live  up  to  their  imagination.  Hence  their  frown  and 
the  anxiety  they  sometimes  conceal,  sometimes  com- 
placently display;  hence  their  haunting  idea  of  an 
imheard-of  creativeness,  the  longing  after  an  expression 
which  may  be  at  the  same  time  lyrical,  epic,  and 
philosophical,  the  straining  after  the  sublime,  or  at  all 
events  the  startling,  in  every  word  they  write.  In  one 
short  phrase  from  the  classic  vocabulary  they  so  much 
despised,  they  are  inflated — that  is  to  say,  exaggerated 
and  discontented,  and  they  are  failures.  Even  the  six- 
teenth centiuy  authors,  bombastic  as  they  often  are, 
and  frequently  inferior  to  their  ideal  as  the  lack  of  a 
fixed  standard  must  have  inevitably  made  them,  seem 
happier;  and  as  to  the  writers  of  the  two  classic  ages, 
they  invariably  strike  by  the  successful  appearance  of 
their  mental  lives.     The  notion  of  suffering  as  the 


302  The  Return  of  the  Light 

inseparable  companion  of  literary  work  owes  its  origin 
entirely  to  the  Romanticists. 

Failures  also  are  the  Naturalists,  even  the  most 
famous  of  them;  Flaubert,  and — a.  long  way  behind 
him — the  Goncourts  and  Zola.  They  not  only  suffer 
from  the  inordinate  ambition  bequeathed  to  them  by 
their  predecessors,  but  from  the  constraint  of  a  formula 
in  which  they  deliberately  shut  themselves  up.  Flau- 
bert, whose  natural  bent  was  poetic  and  lyrical,  spent 
his  whole  life  in  compressing  his  gifts  and  trying  to  make 
his  splendid  imagination  the  handmaid  of  what  he 
insisted  on  calling  the  real.  He  had  revelled  in  the 
composition  of  La  Tentation  de  Saint  Antoinej  the  first 
version  of  which  must  have  been  written  in  pure 
delight ;  but  Madame  Bovary  was  a  work  of  labour  and 
patience,  and  L' Education  Sentimentale  is  as  depressing 
for  the  reader  as  it  must  have  been  for  Flaubert  himself. 
Naturalists  excluded  everything  that  did  not  fall  under 
the  category  of  the  real,  and  poor  Flaubert,  who  had  a 
strong,  if  not  very  noble  wing,  had  to  clip  it,  keep  his 
eyes  steadily  fixed  on  a  few  square  feet  of  a  very  prosaic 
world,  and  peck  at  almost  invisible  little  facts  instead 
of  flying  freely.  However,  his  failure  is  less  one  of 
achievement  than  one  of  method.  VEducation  Senti- 
mentale, although  painful  reading,  is  true  art  all  the 
same,  and  might  have  been  written  in  artistic  enjoy- 
ment. The  mistake  of  Flaubert  was  ambition  in 
the  wrong  direction,  an  exaggeration  of  modesty,  the 
suicide  of  a  man  passionately  in  love  with  life. 

Very  different  the  error  of  Zola ;  it  recalls  that  of  the 
Romanticists.  The  author  of  the  Rougon-Macquart 
certainly  was  a  bom  realist,  a  collector  of  small  facts, 
with  a  sense  of  their  individuality.  If  he  had  had  no 
higher  ambition  than  that  of  being  an  accurate  painter 


Literature  Traditional  Again         303 

of  low  life,  one  might  have  a  certain  contempt  for  his 
nature,  but  not  for  his  artistic  vision ;  he  would  be  a  sort 
of  Restif  de  la  Bretonne.  But  Zola  had  as  much  ambi- 
tion as  Hugo.  The  latter  wanted  to  be  a  sublime  seer; 
Zola  would  be  the  social  philosopher,  condescending  to 
translate  his  philosophy  into  images  as  true  as  life  itself, 
and  more  easily  intelligible.  He  honestly  believed  that 
his  thirty  volumes,  each  one  of  which  was  more  arti- 
ficially conceived  than  its  predecessor,  were  a  faithful 
picture  of  life,  a  document  for  statesmen  and  moralists 
to  build  upon.  The  illusion  at  all  times  would  have 
been  strange — no  sane  man  can  imagine  that  fiction  is 
the  truth,  and  it  took  the  literary  gullibility  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  to  suffer  mere  novelists  to  place  them- 
selves on  the  pedestals  from  which  they  looked  down 
upon  their  betters — ^but  in  Zola  it  was  ludicrous.  The 
philosophy  he  pretended  to  embody  was  the  wire  and 
pasteboard  doctrine  known  as  Determinism;  Zola  felt 
sure  he  could  build  the  history  of  the  Rougon  family  as 
infalHbly  as  Taine  thought  he  could  deduce  the  philo- 
sophy of  English  literature  from  a  cold  and  foggy  climate, 
and  it  was  in  all  seriousness  that  he  regarded  himself 
as  such  a  reader  of  the  modern  soul  that  his  counsel 
ought  to  be  sought  on  all  hands ;  he  felt  his  responsibility 
with  irresistible  comicalness. 

The  same  can  be  said  of  all  his  school,  and  it  is 
chiefly  on  that  account  that  we  are  inclined  to  look  upon 
their  ethos,  as  well  as  that  of  the  Romanticists,  as  for- 
eign to  the  national  temperament.  It  is  not  because 
they  are  low  and  immoral  that  we  can  with  difficulty 
think  of  them  as  legitimate  products  of  the  ancestral 
soil,  but  because  they  are  glum,  gruff,  and  dictatorial, 
short-sighted  and  maniacal,  and  because,  when  we 
complain  of  their  inferior  morality,  they  can  only  offer 


304  The  Return  of  the  Light 

us,  in  order  to  redeem  it,  the  seriousness  of  the  moralist 
instead  of  the  smile  of  the  ironist. 

On  the  whole,  the  good-natured,  unassuming  and 
comrade-like  French  disposition  was  offended  by  the 
Romanticists  aiming  higher  than  anybody  has  a  right 
to,  and  by  the  Naturalists  calling  their  impassivity  a 
scientific  attitude,  and  their  taste  for  the  filthy  a  devo- 
tion to  the  truth.  Besides  something  debasing,  the 
French  felt  there  was  something  hypocritical  in  the 
Realist  School. 

When,  towards  1890,  dawned  the  transformation 
which  Brunetiere  very  aptly  called  the  Renascence  of 
Idealism,  France  was  ready  for  the  change.  The  public 
had  had  enough  physiology,  and  wanted  to  hear  about 
souls;  they  were  tired  of  harshness  and  craved  tender- 
ness and  pity;  tired  also  of  the  depressing  and  the 
coarse,  they  longed  for  elegance  and  cheerfulness.  This 
satiety  caused  the  tremendous  success  of  Bourget,  who 
was  refined  and  a  psychologist;  of  Anatole  France,  who, 
beside  Zola,  looked  like  an  eighteenth-century  engrav- 
ing after  a  public-house  daub;  of  Loti,  whose  every 
feature  was  a  novelty;  of  Barres,  too,  who  in  his  early 
manner  seemed  positively  to  flit  along  the  earth  where 
so  many  were  still  crawling.  Distinction,  wit,  humour 
were  delightfully  refreshing,  and  the  roused  native  taste 
of  the  French  welcomed  them  as  long-lost,  prodigal 
sons  coming  home  at  last,  sick  of  too  coarse  a  world. 

Was  it  or  not  an  untoward  circumstance  that  along 
with  this  return  to  the  traditional  ideal  came  the  ac- 
quaintance with  foreign  literature,  which  we  owed  above 
all  to  Melchior  de  Vogiie?  Certain  it  is  that  the  move- 
ment, which  in  its  origin — the  criticism  of  Brunetiere 
and  the  inclination  of  Anatole  France  and  Bourget — had 
been    distinctly   French,   soon    became    Russian  and 


Literature  Traditional  Again         305 

Scandinavian.  It  was  in  vain  that  Jules  Lemaitre 
pointed  out  in  one  of  his  subtle  articles  that  if  we 
wanted  pity  and  tenderness,  the  apology  of  love  and  the 
canonization  of  suffering,  we  need  not  look  for  them 
further  than  the  novels  of  Victor  Hugo,  George  Sand, 
and  the  Goncourts,  or  the  dramas  of  Alexandre  Dumas; 
the  public  would  not  hear,  and  during  a  decade  French 
thought  and  French  feeling,  which  had  just  found  them- 
selves, were  deeply  tinged  with  the  powerful  emotion  of 
Tolstoi  and  Dostoievsky,  and  the  inferior  but  irresisti- 
bly magnified  influence  of  Ibsen  and  Bjornson. 

The  love  of  the  humble,  the  sympathy  with  the 
suffering,  the  passion  for  justice  which  ran  so  deep  in 
Tolstoi's  broad  current,  certainly  were  needed  after  the 
heartless  Scientism  of  the  writers  on  the  wane;  but 
what  was  not  needed  was  the  predominance  of  feeling 
over  reason  which  suddenly  filled  French  literature  as 
it  had  filled  it  before  the  Revolutions  of  1789  and  1848, 
the  unresisting  abandonment  to  foreign  ideals,  and  the 
humanitarianism  which  was  so  soon  to  transform  the 
Dreyfus  Affair  from  a  judicial  case  into  a  civic  war. 

At  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  battle  of 
the  national  tradition  against  its  restriction  to  Natural- 
ism had  been  won,  it  is  true,  but  apart  from  a  few  imi- 
tators of  Anatole  France  and  Bourget,  French  writers, 
as  a  rule,  would  have  been  at  a  loss  to  prove  that  their 
literary  ideal  was  more  French  than  foreign,  and  the 
atmosphere  of  their  productions,  like  the  Romanticist 
atmosphere,  once  more  possessed  a  noble  but  vague 
quality,  an  excitement  both  fascinating  and  baffling 
which  disconcerted  the  native  taste  for  self-control  in 
the  expression  of  sentiment  as  well  as  of  ideas. 

On  the  whole,  then,  we  are  warranted  in  saying  that 
the  nineteenth  century  may  be  a  fortimate  reaction 


3o6  The  Return  of  the  Light 

against  the  pallid  classicism  of  the  latter  part  of  the 
eighteenth,  and  a  return  to  sources  of  inspiration  which 
had  been  eminently  French  until  the  Renaissance,  but 
both  this  reaction  and  this  return  were  accompanied 
with  excitement  and  fever,  exaggeration  and  violence, 
and  they  were  often  helped  on  or  out  of  their  way  by 
foreign  influences,  which  give  them  an  uncouth  appear- 
ance. Bombast,  obscurity,  a  one-sided  view  of  art 
placing  the  sublime  in  the  exaltation  of  the  low,  a 
research  after  originality  which  was  to  end  in  the 
elaborate  complications  of  the  Decadents,  have  no 
right  to  call  themselves  French. 

It  is  beside  this  description  of  the  French  way  of 
thinking  during  eight  or  nine  decades  that  we  will  at 
present  place  our  attempt  at  an  inventory  of  contem- 
porary characteristics  in  literature,  leaving  it  to  the 
reader  to  find  for  himself  how  great  is  the  contrast. 

The  germs  of  a  fresh  growth  of  the  national  taste 
which  I  have  pointed  out  above  in  the  success  of 
Bourget  and  Anatole  France,  Loti  and  Barres,  also  in 
the  return  of  Moreas  to  a  purely  classical  form,  and  in 
the  curious  partiality  of  a  Verlaine — a.  modem  Villon — 
for  the  eighteenth  century,  its  fetes  galantes,  its  mar- 
quises, its  peculiar  emotiveness  hidden  under  polish,  its 
graceful  bravery  and  its  limpid  expression,  all  this  unex- 
pected craving  for  the  traditional  charm  was,  strange  to 
say,  accompanied  once  more  by  a  foreign  element.  Wag- 
ner, the  prophet  of  heroism,  commented  upon  by 
Nietzsche,  the  admirer  of  brute  force  and  the  revealer  of 
Napoleon,  had  his  day  of  popularity,  but  it  was  to  teach 
the  French  that  the  only  way  of  being  great  is  to  be 
one's  self.  From  that  day  the  French  mind  and  spirit 
have  tended  with  all  their  energies  to  be  resolutely, 
nay,  exclusively  French,  and  the  change  is  visible  in 


Literature  Traditional  Again         307 

every  department  of  literature ;  it  can  be  pointed  out  in 
poetry  and  in  the  novel  as  well  as  in  criticism. 

It  is  difficult  to  mention  French  poetry  to  English 
readers  without  calling  forth  the  somewhat  contemp- 
tuous smile  of  Charlotte  Bronte.  The  French  language 
is  not  poetic,  they  think,  nor  is  the  French  mind.  Both 
are  too  clear  and  clear-cut ;  place  Racine  beside  Shake- 
speare or  Musset  beside  Shelley ;  French  poetry  is  only 
an  eloquent  cadence. 

I  am  not  going  to  discuss  these  strictures.  It  is  a 
fact  that  the  French  mind  uses  prose  as  its  readier 
instrument,  and  it  is  also  a  fact  that,  at  this  present 
moment,  when  the  French  spirit  reasserts  itself,  poetry 
is  far  in  the  background  compared  to  what  it  was  at  the 
beginning  of  Romanticism,  when  Hugo,  Lamartine, 
Musset,  and  Vigny  occupied  the  front  part  of  the  stage. 
There  are  more  poets  than  there  were  at  any  period  of 
French  literature,  and  their  average  work  is  superior  to 
what  it  was  in  the  nineteenth  century ;  but  poetry  is  not 
popular,  and  the  best-known  poets,  the  most  successful 
— say,  Henri  de  Regnier  and  the  Comtesse  de  Noailles 
— do  not  reach  the  twentieth  part  of  Victor  Hugo's 
public. 

The  reason  is  not  because  the  French  are  less  capable 
than  they  were  of  appreciating  poetry,  but  because 
poetry  has  suffered  in  popular  estimation  from  its  too 
obvious  faults  of  twenty  years  ago.  Who  was  the  great 
French  poet  towards  1890?  Mallarme,  no  doubt.  And 
what  was  Mallarme?  Worse  than  an  Alexandrian,  for 
his  pleasure  in  writing  poetry  was  not  the  Alexandrian's 
pleasure  in  mere  words,  but  the  Cubist's  perversion  in 
using  a  medium  for  a  purpose  not  its  own.  Mallarme's 
object  was  so  to  use  words  and  images  that  twenty 
readers  of  the  same  poem  might  be  placed  by  it  in 


3o8  The  Return  of  the  Light 

twenty  different  states  of  mind,  and  no  such  over-refine- 
ment will  ever  be  popular.  I  have  not  the  least  doubt 
but  that  if  Francis  Jammes  or  Madame  de  Noailles, 
especially  such  a  true  poet  as  Charles  Guerin,  had 
appeared  immediately  after  the  Parnassians,  before 
Mallarm6  had  run  away  from  Parnassian  harshness  to 
the  other  extreme  of  disintegration,  they  would  be  even 
more  popular  than  Sully- Prudhomme  was  in  his  last 
years.  Poetry  has  never  been  the  national  mainspring 
in  France — ideas  and  eloquence  play  that  part — the 
French  have  had  no  Homer,  or  Dante,  or  Shakespeare, 
or  Goethe — but  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  they  do 
not  love  poetry,  seeing  that  when  they  cannot  get  it  at 
home  they  go  all  over  the  world  to  find  it.  Only  they 
want  it  to  be  as  intelligible  as  prose,  if  it  is  in  a  different 
way;  hence  their  partiality  for  Villon,  Racine,  and 
Musset;  hence,  conversely,  their  shyness  of  the 
Decadents. 

Now  it  is  certain  that  the  contemporary  school  of 
poetry  is  reassuring.  We  may  safely  say  that  its 
principal  names  are  Madame  de  Noailles,  Francis 
Jammes,  Viele-Griffin,  Henri  de  Regnier,  Paul  Fort, 
Claudel,  and  Verhaeren,  to  whom  we  feel  almost  con- 
strained to  add  Charles  Guerin  and  Angellier,  both 
recently  dead  and  better  known  after  their  death  than 
they  had  been  in  life.  All  these  poets  are  clear,  except 
Claudel,  whose  occasional  obscurity  gives  him  an  almost 
farcical  appearance  entirely  irreconcilable  with  the  su- 
perior parts  of  his  productions.  It  is  not  always  easy  to 
disengage  the  pagan  philosophy  of  Madame  de  Noailles 
from  its  expression;  hers  is  a  childish  little  soul  with 
great  flashes  of  joy  or  sadness  springing  unexpectedly 
from  the  childishness,  and  the  contrast  is  perplexing; 
but  you  find  your  way  in  and  out  of  her  meaning  as 


Literature  Traditional  Again         309 

easily  as  in  and  out  of  the  French  gardens  she  so  fondly 
describes.  Henri  de  Regnier  and  Viele-Grififin  started 
with  the  technical  singularities  in  vogue  twenty-five 
or  thirty  years  ago,  but  they  gradually  gave  up  this 
Decadent  legacy,  and  their  most  popular  poems  demand 
no  effort  or  commentary.  Francis  Jammes's  trans- 
parent purity  naturally  excludes  complication,  and  if 
Verhaeren  is  apt  to  appear  tumultuous  and  misty,  it  is 
after  the  manner  of  the  torrent;  the  least  attention 
shows  order  where  there  is  only  too  much  matter.  Paul 
Fort  often  recalls  La  Fontaine.  As  to  Guerin  and 
Angellier,  the  sensitiveness  of  the  former  and  the  wealth 
of  imagery  of  the  latter  are  united  to  a  precision  of 
expression  which  almost  requires  some  training  not  to 
appear  cloying. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  rising  generation  of 
poets.  There  may  not  be  much  poetry  of  the  truly 
heart-felt  and  heart-nourishing  order  in  the  verses  of 
Jules  Bois,  H.  Barbusse,  Bocquet,  Rivoire,  Pottecher, 
Bonnard,  Porche,  Caillard,  even  in  those  of  Lucie 
Mardrus  and  Helene  Picard — two  women  of  virile 
intelligence — or  in  those  of  the  Catholic  poets,  Mauriac, 
Vallery-Radot,  and  especially  Mercier — an  amazing 
handler  of  words  and  a  sincere  believer — ^but  there  is 
nothing  that  will  discourage  the  long-scared  reader, 
there  is  none  of  the  carelessness  which  gave  an  occasion- 
ally amateurish  appearance,  even  to  Lamartine  and 
Musset,  even  to  Hugo,  and  there  is  frequently  the 
rarity  of  touch,  the  sudden  gleam  over  an  everyday 
word  which  delighted  the  first  readers  of  Tennyson. 

What  are  we  to  conclude  ?  That  after  the  Parnassian 
glacier  and  the  Decadent  jungle,  French  poetry  is 
coming  to  a  more  open  space,  where  the  sun  and  the 
breeze  of  real  inspiration  may  rise  any  day,  and  if 


310  The  Return  of  the  Light 

Claudel  or  Madame  de  Noailles  cannot  be  called 
national  poets,  they  possibly  are  the  forerunners  of  one 
who  will  be  truly  French.  The  mediaeval  emotion  of 
Claudel  certainly  is  French,  and  so  is  the  medium  which 
he  might  borrow  from  Jammes,  or  Madame  de  Noailles; 
why  should  not  the  combination  of  such  an  inspiration 
with  a  form  as  clear  as  that  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  more  poetical,  mean  greatness,  and  greatness  of  a 
decidedly  national  character? 

I  said  above  that  owing  largely  to  the  unintelligibility 
of  the  Decadents,  the  French  are  less  devoted  readers 
of  poetry  than  they  used  to  be.  But  there  is  another 
reason  for  this  comparative  desertion.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  Hugo,  Lamartine, 
Musset,  and  Vigny,  all  poets,  were  the  protagonists  of 
the  literary  world,  the  purely  material  conditions  of 
literature  were  very  different  from  what  they  are  to-day. 
There  were  yet  but  few  papers,  and  even  magazines; 
literature  was  expensive,  though  not  very  well  paid, 
and  as  a  consequence  poetry  stood  a  better  chance  than 
it  does  nowadays,  when  high  and  low  are  simply  be- 
seiged  with  newspapers,  reviews,  and  volumes  of  all 
kinds.  The  literary  grandee  since  the  development  of 
the  Press  after  1830,  and  the  invention  of  the  femlleton, 
has  been  the  novel,  and  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  if  we 
want  to  ascertain  the  tendencies  of  a  time  or  country, 
it  is  in  the  novel  that  we  must  look  for  them.  It  is 
remarkable  that  this  kind  of  literature  attracts  authors 
quite  ^s  much  as  readers,  thanks  to  a  fallacy  which  one 
minute's  examination  is  enough  to  dispel,  but  which 
most  people  will  not  see.  The  novel  combines  two 
powerful  attractions :  it  is  easy — considering  the  multi- 
tude of  its  adepts — and  yet  it  is  great — considering  that 
the  fame  of  Balzac,  Dickens,  Tolstoi,  and  George  Eliot 


Literature  Traditional  Again  311 

is  built  upon  it.  The  consequence  is  that  the  many 
modern  activities  which  are  attracted  to  literature 
because  it  is  a  handy  manner  of  gaining  distinction 
mostly  devote  themselves  to  it.  The  ineradicable  hope 
which  lives  in  every  literary  mind  of  some  day,  through 
luck  or  patience,  producing  a  masterpiece,  deceives 
them;  no  man  so  much  as  the  novelist  flatters  himself 
to  attain  the  maximum  of  effect  with  the  minimum  of 
effort,  and  the  tangible  result  is  a  daily  increasing  flood 
of  fiction. 

Is  it  possible  to  bring  order  and  light  into  this  chaos 
of  names  and  books?  Can  criticism  see  its  way  through 
such  a  confusion  ?  Many  who  have  engaged  in  this  task  ^ 
seem  to  have  given  it  up  in  disgust.  The  idea  now  pre- 
valent among  critics  is  that  we  are  too  near  this  over- 
whelming production,  and  that  it  will  take  years  to 
distinguish  its  really  important  features.  Attempts  at 
clarifying  are  discouraged  by  a  circumstance  which  is  a 
novel  trait  in  modern  literature,  and  makes  discrimina- 
tion more  difficult.  Nothing  was  so  striking  in  the 
literary  history  of  the  nineteenth  century  as  the  inclina- 
tion of  writers  to  be  their  own  interpreters.  From 
Victor  Hugo  to  M.  Saint  Georges  de  Bouhelier,  from 
Romanticism  in  its  cradle  to  Naturism,  no  sooner  had  a 
young  man  an  idea  which  seemed  of  any  promise,  than, 
instead  of  testing  it  through  production,  he  began  to 
theorize  about  it  in  the  tone  of  a  consummate  artist 
who,  with  forty  volumes  behind  him,  could  draw  on 
his  experience  and  build  solidly  upon  it.  This  was 
sometimes  daring,  sometimes — much  oftener — comical, 
but  the  results  made  for  clarity.     All  these  disquisitions, 

'Vid.  MuUer  et  Picard:  Les  Tendances  PrSsentes  de  la  Nouvelle 
Litterature.  Paris,  Basset,  1913.  Henriot:  A  quoi  R^ent  les  Jeunes 
Gens  ?  Paris,  Champion,  1913. 


312  The  Return  of  the  Light 

revelations,  and  manifestoes,  frequently  accompanied 
with  acclamations,  denunciations,  and  excommuni- 
cations, almost  immediately  crystallized  in  formulae 
which  attracted  attention  and  eventuated  in  the  forma- 
tion of  schools.  This  self -analysis  and  clarification,  of 
course,  made  the  business  of  the  literary  historian  much 
easier  than  it  would  have  been  without  them. 

To-day  these  conditions  have  changed.  The  gregar- 
ious instinct  has  deserted  literary  men,  and  they  live 
apart.  Is  it  because  they  have  seen  the  folly  of  expect- 
ing inspiration  from  recipes,  or  because  they  have  a 
tendency  to  despise  all  Bohemianism  and  would  blush 
to  meet  at  the  cafes  of  old,  or  simply  because  literary 
jealousy  has  been  irritated  by  very  practical  considera- 
tions arising  from  the  advantages  attached  to  a  literary 
connection  with  a  daily  or  weekly  paper?  Certain  it  is 
that,  apart  from  a  few  beautiful  friendships,  literary 
men  nowadays  avoid  one  another  as  carefully  as  news- 
paper correspondents  are  apt  to  do,  and  whenever  they 
hit  upon  an  "idea"  seem  as  anxious  to  keep  it  to  them- 
selves as  their  predecessors  were  to  crow  over  it  and 
make  it  obtrusively  public. 

The  consequence  is  that  most  essays  in  contempo- 
rary literature  limit  themselves  to  guarded  statements 
extracted  from  authors  and  reconciled  more  or  less 
satisfactorily  with  their  books.  Synthesis  is  hardly 
ever  attempted.  Yet  the  idea  of  the  modem  literary 
isolation,  like  most  general  ideas,  is  one  which  becomes 
less  discouraging  upon  examination.  The  gregarious 
instinct  is  for  the  time  being  in  abeyance,  it  is  true,  but 
the  even  stronger  instinct  of  imitation  at  its  root  is  not, 
and  we  can  still,  without  too  much  difficulty,  see  it  at 
work  in  the  literary  world.  That  there  are  tendencies  is 
clear,  and  plagiarism  makes  them  as  visible  as  the  glar- 


Literature  Traditional  Again  313 

ing  tickets  of  old  used  to.  In  fact,  had  we  only  the 
titles  of  modern  novels  from  which  to  conjecture  their 
affinities  we  could  do  it ;  in  nothing  does  imitation 
betray  itself  so  much  as  in  the  choice  of  a  title,  and 
talent  itself  frequently  falls  into  this  pit. 

Careful  observation  of  the  literary  field  shows  beyond 
a  doubt  that  two  tendencies  have  for  some  time  been 
at  work ;  one  which  we  feel  immediately  constrained  to 
call  realistic,  and  another  for  which  we  are,  on  the 
contrary,  at  a  loss  to  find  a  name,  but  which  seems 
obviously  to  take  no  pleasure  in  too  close  a  reproduction 
of  the  real. 

Modern  Realism  is  well  represented  in  a  literary 
body  which  was  at  first  regarded  with  some  distrust, 
but  upon  which  duration  has  conferred  authority,  viz., 
the  Goncourt  Academy.  This  Academy,  consisting 
only  of  ten  members,  was  founded  by  Edmond  de  Gon- 
court, not  in  imitation,  but  in  evident  rivalry  of  the 
French  Academy.  The  latter,  having  throughout  its 
existence  associated  moral  with  literary  canons — with 
the  result  of  leaving  out  such  men  as  Moliere,  Balzac, 
and  Flaubert,  discouraging  Daudet  and  openly  despis- 
ing Zola — seemed  to  E.  de  Goncourt  unworthy  of 
representing  the  pure  artistic  feeling,  and  so  he  made 
his  own  foundation  on  absolutely  different  lines.  The 
present  members  of  this  Academy,  MM.  Geffroy,  Rosny , 
Bourges,  Hennique,  Mirbeau,  Descaves,  Leon  Daudet, 
Paul  Margueritte,  and  Madame  Judith  Gautier,  cer- 
tainly have  very  little  in  common  with  the  French 
Academy;  the  something  forceful  but  bordering  on  the 
violent  which  distinguishes  almost  all  of  them  would 
be  decidedly  objectionable  at  the  Palais  Mazarin. 
Year  after  year  the  Goncourt  Academicians  seem  in 
their  choice  of  the  books  to  which  they  award  their 


314  The  Return  of  the  Light 

prizes  to  have  in  view  mainly  some  amends  to  a  young 
writer  for  being  unjustly  and  narrow-mindedly  over- 
looked by  the  official  judges  in  the  French  Academy. 
This  attitude  is  so  marked,  that  even  an  ordinary 
reader  would  begin  to  see  his  way  through  the  multi- 
tude of  modern  novels  merely  by  putting  apart  such  as 
he  feels  would  be  agreeable  to  the  Goncourt  Academy 
and  suspicious  to  the  other. 

Now,  how  should  we  characterize  this  realism  of  the 
Goncourt  Academicians  and  of  the  writers  they  patron- 
ize? It  is  as  different  from  the  realism  embodied  in 
Zola  as  Zola  himself  was  different  from  the  Goncourt 
brothers.  It  is  true  that  La  Fille  Elisa  paved  the  way 
for  rAssommoir,  but  La  Fille  Elisa  was  written  by 
Edmond  de  Goncourt  after  the  death  of  his  brother,  and 
the  real  Goncourt  taste  was  certainly  not  for  the  gratui- 
tously low  and  horrible.  These  writers  were  artists; 
they  were  so  with  so  much  resolution  that  the  reader  is 
conscious  of  an  effort  where  they  wanted  only  to  apply 
a  method,  but  the  effort  is  in  the  opposite  direction  to 
that  followed  by  Zola.  Where  Zola  wanted  the  dreary 
fatalism  of  what  he  called  life  to  reign  supreme,  the 
Goncourts  would  seek  another  element;  they  selected 
and  arranged,  and  their  pleasure  lay  as  much  in  the 
treatment  as  in  the  accuracy  of  their  matter.  With 
more  taste  than  power,  and  yet  an  inclination  towards 
a  kind  of  novel  which  required  power  before  everything, 
it  was  impossible  that  they  should  ever  rise  to  the  first 
rank,  but  it  is  no  less  true  that  their  notion  of  realism — 
nature  artistically  dealt  with — ^has  been  realized  in  the 
best  fiction,  from  the  Odyssey  to  Les  Paysans  or  Middle- 
inarch. 

It  is  in  this  same  spirit  that  we  see  practically  all 
contemporary  realists  approach  their  subjects.     Leav- 


Literature  Traditional  Again  315 

ing  aside  a  few  older  writers,  like  Mirbeau,  Descaves, 
or  Hennique,  who  never  could  tell  robustness  from 
brutality,  they  see  that  the  inherent  faults  of  realism, 
viz.,  lack  of  mellowness  or  atmosphere,  aloofness  and 
harshness,  are  indeed  faults  and  not  distinctions,  and 
they  try  to  remedy  or  conceal  them. 

Most  of  them  believe,  like  the  Goncourts,  in  the 
redeeming  virtue  of  style;  they  are  artists.  The  only 
difference  between  men  like  the  Rosny  brothers,  P. 
Margueritte,  and — ^in  spite  of  his  exaggerations — Paul 
Adam,  or — among  the  younger  generation — writers 
like  J.  A.  Nau,  Mme.  Colette,  Binet-Valmer,  Savignon, 
Elder,  Werth,  Hamp,  Roupnel,  Pergaud,  and  the  ultra- 
refined  imitators  of  the  classics,  of  whom  we  shall  speak 
by  and  by,  is  merely  that  they  seek  a  higher  relief 
than  the  others  and  are  more  attracted  by  popular 
naturalness  or  intensity. 

Beside  these  we  find  others  as  incapable  as  them- 
selves of  painting  otherwise  than  from  life,  but  whose 
natural  bent  is  to  tinge  the  picture  with  their  own 
mental  colouring.  Some  of  them,  undoubtedly  under 
the  influence  of  Dostoievsky,  are  positively  soaked 
in  sadness  and  tenderness.  Geffroy,  the  author  of 
L'Apprentie,  Frapie,  the  author  of  La  Maternelle,  above 
all  Ch.  M.  Philippe — ^recently  dead,  but  a  daily  grow- 
ing influence — and  his  obvious  imitators,  Hirsch, 
Moselly,  Ch.  M.  Garnier,  and  Marguerite  Audoux, 
are  all  painters  of  the  humble  life,  but  they  select  it  for 
its  inherent  pathos,  which  reveals  an  abyss  between 
them  and  the  soulless  author  of  VAssommoirj  who 
selected  it  for  its  crudities. 

Finally,  another  school  seems  also  to  crave  some- 
thing richer  than  nude  reality,  but  its  tendency  is 
not  sentimental.      L.  Bertrand,  the  Leblond  brothers. 


3i6  The  Return  of  the  Light 

d'Esparbes,  the  seaman  writer  Claude  Farrere,  Mont- 
fort,  often  also  P.  Adam  and  the  brothers  Rosny, 
locate  their  stories  in  sumptuous  surroundings,  fre- 
quently under  glowing  colonial  heavens,  and  with  a 
general  wealth  of  background  throwing  its  reflection 
over  the  everyday  details.  This  method  once  more 
brings  us  much  nearer  Salammho  than  La  Terre,  and 
evidently  ignores  the  canons  of  Naturalism. 

On  the  whole,  it  appears  evident  that  the  gloomy 
workshop,  or,  if  you  prefer  another  simile,  the  sordid 
hospital  room  next  door  to  a  charnel-house,  in  which 
the  school  of  Zola  indulges  its  sombre  mania,  has  been 
deserted,  and  that  the  taste  for  the  real,  without  which 
the  works  of  Moliere,  Lesage,  and  I'Abbe  Prevost  would 
not  exist,  is  once  more  associated  in  French  literature 
with  art,  its  indispensable  guide. 

This,  after  all,  is  merely  the  condition  of  literary 
beauty  in  any  language  or  country,  and  might  only 
mean  that  the  French  have  recovered  from  the  strange 
exaggeration  into  which  the  sickening  formality  of 
classicism  in  its  decay  had  thrown  them ;  but  it  is  only 
one  aspect  of  the  contemporary  production,  and  there  is 
another  of  far  greater  significance. 

The  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  already 
said,  almost  invariably  gives  us  the  impression  of  an 
effort.  The  Romanticists  as  well  as  the  Realists  and 
the  Naturalists  always  seemed  to  show  off — they  com- 
pelled us  to  admire  their  muscles.  Their  redundance 
is  nothing  else  than  the  complacent  repetition  of  the 
amateur  dumb-bell  performer,  and  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  it  gave  so  much  offence  in  the  few  eighteenth- 
century  drawing-rooms  which  were  reopened  after  the 
Revolution.  It  jarred  as  barbarous,  ungentlemanly, 
and  foreign.     After  nearly  a  himdred  years  it  is  the 


Literature  Traditional  Again  317 

same  reaction  we  witness  in  at  least  fifteen  out  of  twenty 
literary  people,  and  one  refrains  with  difficulty  from 
labelling  the  schools  I  have  just  reviewed  as  *'less 
French,"  in  the  sense  which  I  endeavoured  to  define 
at  the  beginning  of  this  paper. 

What  the  Romanticists  bequeathed  to  us  consisted 
chiefly  in  an  admiration  of  the  exceptional;  a  straining 
after  originality  which,  in  the  space  of  a  decade  or  two, 
completely  transformed  not  only  the  literary  con- 
ceptions, but,  which  is  more  extraordinary,  the  lan- 
guage itself.  Thousands  of  snobbish  imitators  of  Hugo 
forgot  the  medium  they  had  received  from  Voltaire, 
because  they  despised  what  they  called  its  cheap 
elegance  and  superficial  clarity,  but  they  could  not  so 
easily  invent  one  capable  of  taking  its  place.  The 
French  they  wrote  was  now  bombastic,  now  bordering 
on  the  coarseness  which  Revolutionary  levellers  had 
imposed  with  the  "/w"  and  the  '' citoyen'' ;  but  it  was 
hardly  ever  rich.  One  single  generation  is  unequal  to 
the  long  work  of  ages  in  the  formation  of  a  language 
combining  accuracy  with  picturesqueness.  The  semi- 
international  and  fleshless  vocabulary  of  the  Press,  just 
then  finding  favourable  conditions,  completed  the  dis- 
aster. Whereas  literature  spoke  a  language  of  its  own, 
different  with  each  writer,  and  which  was  eventually 
to  develop  into  the  wild  inventions  of  the  Decadents, 
mere  readers  learned  another,  from  which  the  grace 
and  the  pith  of  its  predecessor  were  entirely  gone.  So 
after  the  decadence  of  taste  we  saw  the  decadence  of 
the  language,  which  is  the  beginning  of  barbarism,  and 
one  could  have  hardly  foreseen  that  a  restoration  of 
both  taste  and  language  was  so  near. 

Who  is  responsible  for  this  unexpected  turn,  it  is  not 
very  difficult  to  say.     Renan,  by  his  classic  taste  and 


31 8  The  Return  of  the  Light 

intellectual  honesty,  was  a  link  between  our  writers 
and  those  who  thought  more  of  what  they  had  to  say 
than  of  the  manner  of  saying  it;  Anatole  France  wor- 
shipped the  French  undefiled  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  many  a  young  man  learned  it  in  his  books  as  one 
learns  a  foreign  tongue;  Jules  Lemaitre,  both  in  his 
style  and  in  his  way  of  judging  things,  even  in  his 
charming  personality,  was  a  revelation.  Here  was  a 
Frenchman  of  wide  influence,  content  with  the  popular 
qualities  of  his  race  and  disdaining  anything  that  his 
countrymen  could  not  with  proper  culture  attain,  and 
yet  with  this  modest  ambition  it  appeared  that  he  not 
only  made  the  most  of  his  gifts,  but,  compared  with  others 
of  apparently  higher  flight,  was  found  decidedly  supe- 
rior.   Once  more  the  art  of  thinking  summed  up  in 

Ne  forgons  point  notre  talent 

showed  its  long-forgotten  efficacy,  and  the  lesson  was 
taken  to  heart.  Add  that  the  something  vulgar  in 
French  politics  of  which  everybody  became  more  and 
more  conscious  and  tired,  threw  the  dissatisfied  minds 
back  to  gentler  times,  and  went  far  to  prepare  the  soil 
for  finer  literary  seeds. 

The  characteristic  of  the  generation  of  literary 
prose  writers  now  between  twenty-five  and  thirty-five 
is  certainly,  in  the  phrase  of  one  of  its  representatives, 
M.  Andre  du  Fresnois,  that  ''  elle  a  rappris  Vaisance,'^ 
They  have  re-learned  naturalness,  and  their  gait  is 
elastic  and  free.  They  never  frown  and  they  often 
smile ;  they  are  capable  of  emotion,  but  they  shun  senti- 
mentalism,  and  morbidity  is  loathsome  to  them ;  instead 
of  everlastingly  talking  about  truth,  they  aim  at  what 
our  ancestors  modestly  called  "justness";  you  never 


Literature  Traditional  Again         319 

hear  them  utter  the  word  ''attempt"  with  the  boastful 
humility  of  the  Decadents,  to  whom  anything  new 
was  a  thing  admirable,  but  they  are  not  afraid  of  think- 
ing of  perfection;  they  are  enthusiastic,  but  when  they 
feel  so  it  is  for  good  reasons,  which  they  are  ready  to 
give  you;  finally,  they  have  gone  back  to  the  days 
when  the  language  was  full  of  idioms  and  racy  phrases 
or  images,  which  certainly  were  the  common  property  of 
all,  but  had  more  charm  on  the  lips  of  a  porter  who  had 
caught  them  from  his  mother  than  in  the  books  of  a 
Romanticist  who  laboriously  re-invented  them;  their 
French  is  once  more  crisp  and  direct,  or  graceful,  and 
to  the  immense  relief  of  some  of  their  elders,  they  spare 
us  adjectives.  In  short,  they  are  very  near  the  com- 
bination of  qualities  which  foreigners  were  wont  to  call 
French  in  the  days  when  this  word  had  the  most  mean- 
ing; and  being  French,  that  is  to  say  themselves,  they 
are  happy,  which  is  a  precious  literary  asset,  far  supe- 
rior to  the  vain  hope  of  becoming  some  day  sublime. 
Trying  to  number  these  new  writers  would  be  futile ; 
their  multitude  baffles  the  most  honest  desire  of  keeping 
up  with  their  production,  and  frequently  discourages 
classification.  A  great  many  of  them  are  mere  imi- 
tators of  that  greatest  of  imitators,  Anatole  France,  or 
at  best  of  the  writers  whom  Anatole  France  imitates. 
Behind  Henri  de  Regnier,  Pierre  Louys,  Marcel  Bou- 
lenger,  the  brothers  Tharaud,  etc.,  you  could  find  a  host 
of  men  and  women  who  have  had  the  revelation  of 
the  remarkable  virtue  of  the  pastiche,  viz.,  to  make  in- 
spiration possible  for  people  who  otherwise  would  never 
know  what  it  meant.  There  is  no  deep  originality 
there,  to  be  sure,  but  there  is  a  simplicity  nearly  akin  to 
sincerity,  and  there  is,  above  all,  the  resurrection  of  the 
language.     Were  it  not  for  his  irony,  Anatole  France 


320  The  Return  of  the  Light 

would  only  be  the  top  boy  in  a  large  class  of  pupils  of 
Voltaire  and  Montesquieu,  and,  in  better  days,  would 
not  be  taken  seriously.  But  seeing  that  what  he  gave  us 
is  exactly  what  we  needed,  he  is,  in  one  respect  at  least, 
a  genius,  and  his  imitators,  if  they  are  only  imitators, 
are  at  all  events  the  makers  of  an  atmosphere  in  which 
something  better  than  imitation  will  grow. 

Even  now  we  meet  with  many  works  which  it  would 
be  unfair  to  label  as  mere  imitations,  although  their 
classical  parentage  can  easily  be  traced.  Of  humorists 
like  Tristan  Bernard,  Andre  Beaunier  and  Jean  Giraud- 
oux  we  feel  constrained  to  say  that  what  imitation  has 
afforded  them  was  only  the  possibility  to  be  themselves, 
and  that  they  are  really  themselves. 

Besides  we  already  find  a  whole  school  of  novelists, 
the  special  quality  of  whom  has  no  prototype ;  it  is  the 
school  of  refined  and  poetic  writers  who  do  too  much 
honour,  it  seems  to  me,  to  Rene  Boylesve  by  speaking 
of  him  as  a  chief.  All  that  should  be  said  is  that  he  was 
a  forerunner.  Here  the  sharpness  of  the  eighteenth 
centiuy  lines  is  softened  by  a  smiling  tenderness  which 
in  most  cases  must  have  come  straight  from  Dickens — 
extensively  read  in  France — or  by  the  poeticalness  of 
Fromentin.  Marcelle  Tinayre,  J.  des  Gachons,  A.  de 
Chateaubriand,  Jaloux,  Larbaud,  Miomandre,  Viollis, 
Lafon,  Nesmy,  Mainiac,  Vallery-Radot,  G.  de  Voisins, 
all  suggest  the  classic  conception,  but  all  make  us  see 
in  the  background  of  their  stories  a  bright  rainbow 
which  the  eighteenth  century  never  conjured. 

A  similar  remark  may  be  made  concerning  the 
psychologists,  A.  Gide,  the  Tharaud  brothers,  Benda, 
especially  Emile  Clermont,  whom  two  volumes  have 
been  enough  to  render  famous.  Their  novels  are  ob- 
viously conceived  and  written  in  close  imitation  of  what 


Literature  Traditional  Again         321 

used  to  be  called  recits,  and  betray  the  haunting  pre- 
sence of  Adolphe  and  of  the  less-known  stories  which 
Adolphe  has  thrown  into  the  shade,  but  there  is  a  quality 
in  them  which  would  not  be  found  even  in  Adolphe, 
What  this  quality  is  cannot  be  easily  defined ;  it  may  be 
only  the  contrast  between  the  high  plane  which  a  true 
soul  crisis  requires  and  the  low  physiology  of  Natural- 
ism, but  whatever  it  may  be,  it  strikes  us  as  an  original- 
ity. I  must  also  mention  a  class  of  writers  less  intent 
upon  the  merely  artistic  aspect  of  their  work,  but  who, 
however,  help  quite  as  much  as  the  rest  in  measiuing 
the  distance  between  the  present  generation  and  that 
which  worshipped  Zola.  After  Bourget,  Barres,  and 
Bazin,  men  like  H.  Bordeaux,  P.  Acker,  J.  Psichari, 
Variot,  and  A.  Baumann,  and — in  spite  of  his  splendid 
isolation  and  different  spirit — R.  Rolland,  are  as 
interested  in  the  moral  and  social  lesson  of  life  as  in  life 
itself,  and  would  be  best  called  Idealists,  although  the 
wish  to  be  true  is  alive  in  them,  as  in  any  Realist. 

As  a  conclusion,  let  me  repeat  emphatically  that  if 
anybody  had  predicted  in  1880  that  less  than  forty 
years  later  the  source  of  inspiration  and  the  whole  tone 
of  the  French  novel  would  have  changed,  the  prediction 
would  have  sounded  more  than  improbable.  Yet  this 
apparent  impossibility  is  to-day  sober  reality,  and  has 
for  some  time  ceased  to  astonish.  The  battle  in  which 
Bourget,  Loti,  Barres,  and  A.  France  engaged  with  Zola 
has  been  won  twenty  times  over,  and  no  signs  show 
that  another  corruption  of  the  public  taste  is  likely. 

The  reader  may  very  naturally  ask  himself  whether 
this  fortunate  change  for  the  better  has  been  productive 
of  exceptional  effects,  and  whether  the  rising  generation 
has  any  masterpieces  to  show.  The  answer  must  be  in 
the  negative.     Not  only  have  our  young  writers  failed 


322  The  Return  of  the  Light 

as  yet  to  produce  anything  that  may  be  named  with 
the  classics  of  the  French  language,  but  one  hesitates 
to  compare  them  with  the  authors  mentioned  above  as 
entering  the  field  before  them,  viz.,  Bourget,  France, 
Loti,  and,  shortly  afterwards,  Barres.  These  young 
men  are  all  distinguished,  but  you  can  hardly  call  any 
of  them  powerful.  Is  it  because  their  principles  are 
opposed  to  exaggeration  and  even  insistence,  that  they 
are  afraid  of  a  strong  treatment  and  apt  to  indulge  in 
mere  daintiness?  Or  is  it  because,  thinking  the  literary 
professionalism  of  the  nineteenth  century  bad  form, 
they  are  inclined  to  act  as  men  of  the  world  with  an 
aversion  to  repetition?  Or  are  we,  the  public,  to  blame, 
and  is  it  because  we  have  been  so  long  accustomed  to 
the  enormous  effort  of  men  like  Hugo,  Balzac,  and  Zola, 
even  Bourget  and  Anatole  France,  that  we  cannot 
separate  greatness  from  productivity,  and  would  rather 
tolerate  repetition  than  apparent  inaction?  I  should 
not  be  surprised  if  this  were  largely  the  truth.  We  can- 
not remember  the  days  when  Bourget  and  A.  France 
having  only  produced  their  first  works — ^which  proved 
not  to  have  been  their  worst — we  looked  upon  them 
merely  as  promising  young  men,  very  like  the  promising 
young  men  of  to-day.  Perhaps  we  only  place  Romain 
Rolland  apart  from  the  rest  because  he  was  lucky 
enough  to  strike  a  vein  or,  more  accurately,  adopt 
a  method  which  enabled  him  to  insist  and  repeat 
without  being  taken  to  task  for  it.  It  may  be  that  if 
he  had  written  his  ten  volumes  on  ten  different  subjects 
instead  of  indefatigably  expanding  the  story  of  his  hero, 
we  should  complain  of  his  monotony  instead  of  extol- 
ling his  power.  Certainly  the  inspiration  of  the  less 
productive  novelists  does  not  differ  in  quality  from 
that  of  Romain  Rolland;  their  common  characteristic 


Literature  Traditional  Again         323 

is  naturalness  and  facility,  whether  the  writers  indulge 
in  or  hold  in  check  their  facility. 

It  may  be  also  that  we  are  coming  to  a  period  in  which 
the  quantity  and  comparative  excellence  of  productions 
will  result  in  a  highly  estimable  uniformity  similar  to 
that  which  strikes  the  student  of  literary  history  in  the 
first  two  thirds  of  the  eighteenth  century;  surely  this 
would  be  better  from  the  mere  artistic  standpoint 
than  the  ambitious  poverty  of  the  second  part  of  the 
nineteenth. 

But  whether  we  are  in  the  presence  of  mere  promises 
or  have  to  be  content  with  what  we  have  been  given  so 
far,  all  this  is  pure  speculation,  and  need  not  detain  us 
any  longer.  From  the  positive  point  of  view  adopted  in 
this  volume,  it  is  not  so,  and  we  can  speak  with  certi- 
tude. Certainly  the  defeat  of  that  low  offspring  of 
Romanticism  and  Realism — the  naturalist  novel — and 
the  substitution  for  it  of  another  infinitely  more  flexible 
in  its  forms  and  calling  forth  some  of  the  most  sterling 
French  qualities — balance,  wit,  elegance,  psychological 
penetration,  and,  above  all,  that  incomparable  dowry 
of  the  national  genius,  clarity — is  of  capital  significance, 
not  only  for  literature,  but  for  the  intellectual  health  of 
the  nation  at  large,  and  this,  as  we  said  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  chapter,  is  what  really  matters. 

In  fact,  what  was  the  reaction  of  Hterature  on  the 
popular  consciousness  from  the  Revolutionary  to  the 
Dreyfus  times?  A  very  enervating  one.  The  affecta- 
tion of  impossible  sentiments  by  the  poets,  the  high- 
flown  theories  of  second-rate  philosophers,  the  laborious 
obscurity  of  even  everyday  prose-writers,  were  all 
puzzling  and  bewildering;  and  the  exquisite  letters  of 
Dupuy  and  Cotonet  in  Musset's  works  are  only  the 
amusing  expression  of  a  very  general  and  very  depress- 


324  The  Return  of  the  Light 

ing  experience.  Its  immediate  consequence  was  an 
exaggerated  respect  for  scribblers  of  all  kinds,  which 
had  originated  under  the  Encyclopaedists,  but  gradually 
increased  to  the  extent  of  making  Hugo's  influence 
greater  than  that  of  Voltaire  or  Rousseau.  Finally,  it 
reversed  the  scale  of  values  in  the  minds  of  all  except  the 
lucky  illiterate,  placing  art  before  action,  and  inducing  a 
preference  for  sentimental  experiences  of  a  rare  kind, 
crises,  as  they  were  called,  and  things  which  would  look 
well  in  print,  instead  of  the  manly  enjoyment  of  positive 
influence.  Emma  Bovary,  in  this  respect,  is  a  wide- 
embracing  analysis.  The  nineteenth  century  will 
appear  in  French  history  as  a  curious  lapse  in  the  tradi- 
tional frankness  during  which  a  peculiar  kind  of  atti- 
tudinizing prevailed,  impelling  people  to  pretend 
understanding,  when  they  did  not  understand,  and 
to  demand  sympathy  for  emotions  they  never  could 
feel. 

Quite  the  reverse  is  the  result  of  the  recent  literary 
evolution.  The  transparency  in  concept  and  expres- 
sion which  has  become  an  indispensable  condition  for 
acceptance  is  so  natural  to  the  French  that  while  it 
gives  them  pleasure  it  causes  them  no  surprise,  and  con- 
sequently the  enjoyment  of  literary  excellence  has 
become  once  more  a  calming  influence.  Conversely  we 
see  a  declared  aversion,  not  unmixed  with  scorn,  to 
unreasoned  enthusiasm,  that  of  Michelet  as  much  as 
that  of  popular  Dreyfusism,  and  an  impatience  of 
*' clouds"  of  all  kinds.  The  question  which  was  never 
asked  during  the  classical  ages,  because  it  never  had  to 
be  asked,  nor  during  the  nineteenth  century,  because 
it  would  have  been  asked  too  often :  What  do  you  mean? 
is  so  universal  to-day  that  it  will  soon  become  super- 
fluous.    It  is  remarkable  that  there  is  only  one  critical 


Meaning  of  M.  Bergson's  Success     325 

school  at  the  present  moment,  that  of  Neo-classics,  and 
that  clarity  is  its  only  canon. 

So  literature  is  gradually  resuming  its  true  place, 
which  is  behind  life  as  a  beautiful  reflection  of  life,  and 
not  in  the  forefront.  The  literary  colossus  of  the  Hugo, 
Michelet,  or  Balzac  type,  who  towered  above  the  nine- 
teenth century  and  intimidated  even  a  man  like  Taine 
would  now  be  impossible.  If  his  place  is  to  be  filled, 
it  will  be  by  a  new  Napoleon  and  not  by  a  writer. 

I  see  two  main  tendencies  set  free  by  the  literature 
of  the  last  thirty  years,  one  embodied  in  the  psychologi- 
cal concept  of  Bourget  and  Barres  and  the  other  in  the 
irony  of  Anatole  France.  The  former  makes  for  libera- 
tion, for  personal  responsibility;  the  latter  stands  for 
the  superiority  of  common  sense,  of  French  lightness — 
not  levity — of  wit  as  the  gaiety  of  intelligence;  both 
amoimt  to  the  predominance  of  action  over  books.  In 
one  word,  France  is  practically  cured  of  the  literary 
malady  which  went  far  to  make  her  vital  reaction  more 
difficult  after  1870  than  it  would  have  been  a  himdred 
and  especially  two  hundred  years  before ;  recovering  her 
taste  for  Hght,  she  cannot  but  recover  her  health. 

2.     The  Meaning  of  M.  Bergson*s  Success 

Is  it  merely  a  philosopher's  success?  Is  not,  on  the 
contrary,  this  startling  vogue  another  sign  of  the 
appreciation  of  clarity  and  sincerity  which  is  perceptible 
on  all  hands  and  rapidly  changes  the  characteristics  of 
contemporary  literature?     I  think  so. 

Fight  your  way,  if  you  can,  into  the  ridiculously  small 
room  in  which  M.  Bergson  lectures  at  the  College  de 
France,  and  wait  among  the  expectant  crowd  until  the 
hour  comes.     Perhaps  you  know  nothing  about  the 


326  The  Return  of  the  Light 

professor,  except  that  he  is  quite  original,  constructs 
the  worid  in  a  manner  entirely  his  own.  This  rather 
intimidates  you;  philosophy  is  naturally  overawing, 
and  you  dread  having  to  make  a  special  effort  to  under- 
stand this  particular  system.  On  the  stroke  of  the 
hour  the  professor  appears.  He  is  a  spare  little  man, 
with  nothing  remarkable  besides  his  admirably  formed 
brow  and  an  exceptionally  winsome  smile.  He  has  not 
been  half  a  minute  in  his  chair  before  you  feel  that  the 
audience  is  in  simple  and  familiar  sympathy  with  him. 
He  begins  to  speak,  summing  up  his  previous  lecture  in 
the  old  fashion,  and  annotmcing  his  subject  for  to-day. 
There  is  no  solemnity  whatever  in  his  utterance,  nothing 
that  is  not  perfectly  natural  in  the  wonderfully  managed 
voice,  so  clear  that  only  after  a  few  minutes  do  you 
notice  that  it  hardly  rises  above  the  very  lowest  key. 
All  he  says  is  simple,  but  as  he  says  it  you  become 
conscious  of  a  constantly  growing  interest  in  the  ques- 
tion, as  if  you  had  never  heard  it  discussed  before. 
From  time  to  time  hard  and  dry  facts  are  adduced 
from  some  learned  work,  but  so  much  to  the  point  that 
it  seems  as  if  they  had  been  collected  to  serve  the  pro- 
fessor^s  purpose.  M.  Bergson  himself  is  conscious  of  it, 
and  his  charming  smile  brightens  up  the  thin  face. 
Everything  he  says  makes  the  subject  clearer,  until  it 
appears  as  elemental  as  if  it  were  propounded  by  the 
mind  of  a  child,  and  philosophy  must  be  the  plainest 
answer  to  very  natural  questions  which  nobody  has  a 
business  to  complicate.  The  old  saying  about  the  ora- 
tor who  turned  out  to  be  not  an  orator  but  a  man  sings 
in  your  ear,  and  as  you  hear  it  you  feel  compelled  to 
substitute  another  phrase  of  a  more  purely  French 
character.  This  man  who  sees  things  so  directly  and 
expresses  them  in  such  clear,  almost  everyday  language 


Meaning  of  M.  Bergson's  Success     327 

is  a  modem  Descartes  converting  philosophy  from  jar- 
gon, indeed;  but  he  also  is  what  the  French  language 
since  the  days  of  Descartes  has  called,  very  simply  but 
very  forcibly,  Vhonnete  homme,  as  distinguished  from  the 
pedant.  Then  you  notice  that  if  the  presence  of  a  cer- 
tain number  of  smartly  dressed  women  in  this  room  is 
objectionable  in  one  respect,  it  is  not  so  from  another 
point  of  view;  M.  Bergson  speaks  in  a  whitewashed 
lecture-room,  but  it  is  not  amiss  that  this  room  should 
recall  a  salon.  How  far  we  feel  from  the  days — not  long 
past,  though — when  everything,  from  literature  to 
politics,  was  acceptable  only  if  it  paraded  imder  a  thick 
mask  of  technicalities ! 

You  leave  the  College  de  France  after  a  lecture  of 
M.  Bergson*s  as  you  leave  a  concert-room  after  Mozart, 
with  the  sensation  of  something  sunny  which  you  would 
like  to  be  able  to  re-create  when  you  would ;  and,  as  you 
cannot  always  be  at  the  College  de  France,  you  buy  the 
philosopher's  three  or  four  volumes  and  you  begin 
studying  them.  Are  you  perfectly  satisfied?  No. 
The  volimie  on  Les  Donnees  Immediates  de  la  Con- 
science sums  up  a  great  deal  of  purely  scientific  reading; 
Matiere  et  Memoire  is  so  compact  and  full  that  its 
apparent  clarity  is  elusive;  L' Evolution  Creatrice  is  a 
poem  which  you  read  as  you  read  Dante,  wading 
through  difficult  parts  in  the  hope  of  coming  to  enchant- 
ing oases.  So  philosophy,  even  with  Bergson  to  intro- 
duce you  to  it,  cannot  avoid  being  philosophical  and  dry. 
This  is  a  disappointment.  Another  experience  in  the 
course  of  your  reading  is  even  more  so.  As  you  begin 
to  realize  what  M.  Bergson  means  by  intuition,  you 
conceive  great  hopes.  This  intellectual  process,  which 
puts  us  in  immediate  communication  with  realities — it 
is  not  philosophy,  it  is  something  more  general  and 


328  The  Return  of  the  Light 

simple — ^why,  everything  told,  ought  it  not  to  be  called 
an  "art  of  thinking"?  The  discovery  is  elating.  M. 
Bergson's  philosophy  is  only  a  metaphysical  novel,  as 
likely  or  unlikely  as  the  others,  and  you  are  not  unwise 
enough  not  to  notice  that  it  is  built  from  the  Evolution- 
ists' note-books.  But  an  "art  of  thinking"  is  what  we 
all,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  are  for  ever  seeking. 
Nothing  makes  us  so  happy  as  the  discovery  of  a  truth; 
it  is  what  we  everlastingly  hope  to  chance  upon  in  talking, 
and  the  idea  gives  something  almost  feverish  to  French 
conversation.  And  what  is,  after  all,  the  great  charm 
of  M.  Bergson's  lectures?  Only  that  for  an  hour  he 
produces  no  end  of  startling  truths  from  his  simple 
premises.  So  the  idea  that  he  may  give  us  his  secret 
for  thinking  right  and  bright  is  highly  exciting.  But  as 
you  re-read  and  re-think  what  he  says  about  the  intui- 
tive process,  one  unfortunate  intuition  gradually  dawns 
upon  you.  This  magic  process,  which  looks  at  first 
sight  like  a  sublime  recipe,  is,  after  all,  only  a  descrip- 
tion, and  a  description  of  what? — of  all  things,  a  descrip- 
tion of  genial  thinking.  What  do  you  gain  by  being 
told  that  the  only  way  of  thinking  right  is  to  think  like 
Plato,  Kant,  or  Pasteur,  and  not  only  think  as  they  did, 
but  think  as  they  did  in  their  most  divine  moments? 
This,  indeed,  is  disheartening. 

But  put  the  volumes  back  on  your  shelves  and  seek 
once  more  the  whitewashed  room  at  the  College  de 
France.  This  time  M.  Bergson  is  lecturing  on  Berkeley 
or  Spinoza.  He  may  be  tempted  by  some  point  in  his 
subject  to  evoke  the  springing  fountain  which  helps 
his  imagination  to  visualize  the  effort  upwards  of  life  as 
spirit  and  its  dropping  down  as  matter ;  and  according  to 
your  individual  tendency  you  will  like  or  dislike  the 
invitation  the  poet-philosopher  makes  to  you  of  uniting 


Meaning  of  M.  Bergson*s  Success     329 

almost  mystically  with  the  universal  flux;  but  possibly 
you  will  hear  nothing  of  the  kind.  M.  Bergson  will  not 
make  any  attempt  at  solving  the  great  enigma;  per- 
haps he  will  say  nothing  that  will  strike  you  as  deep  or 
even  novel ;  but  as  he  proceeds  in  his  delightful  leisurely 
manner  to  expound  Berkeley's  or  Spinoza's  doctrine 
you  will  be  conscious  of  a  wonderful  gift  for  showing 
us  a  human  attitude  behind  the  tendency  of  a  meta- 
physical system,  and  you  will  marvel  once  more  at  an 
expression  so  perfectly  subdued  that  it  hardly  seems 
different  from  the  thought. 

This  means  that  what  you  admire  the  most  in  Berg- 
son is  his  talent.  And  do  not  let  the  discovery  shock 
you.  Certainly  there  are  among  the  young  philo- 
sophers who  follow  M.  Bergson  some  who  may  be  as 
interested  as  himself  in  a  scientific  representation  of  the 
world,  and  there  are  also  many  among  his  admirers  who 
rejoice  at  the  change  from  Taine's  philosophy  to  his,  at 
the  possibilities  his  criticism  of  materialism  has  opened 
for  the  moralist;  but  the  intellectual  attraction  which 
the  most  intelligent  section  of  the  public  feels  for  M. 
Bergson  is  not  philosophical.  It  is  not  purely  literary 
either.  It  is  that  higher  aspect  of  the  literary  tendency 
which  really  is  a  moral  one  and  constitutes  an  ethos 
in  itself,  viz.,  perfect  sincerity,  as  opposed  to  the  craze 
which  impelled  the  nineteenth  century  literary  man  to 
say  anything  as  long  as  it  looked  well  in  print.  That 
M.  Bergson  is  interested  in  metaphysics  appears  as  a 
minor  point ;  that  he  is  interested  in  it  as  the  seventeenth- 
century  people  were  interested  in  everything — deeply, 
seriously,  and  without  any  reference  to  writing  or  being 
read — is  what  really  matters.  What  our  contempo- 
raries love  the  most  in  M.  Bergson  is  his  honesty,  and 
the  clear-sightedness  which  is  its  reward  comes  after. 


330  The  Return  of  the  Light 

This  is  enough  to  place  the  present  generation  above 
that  which  admired  Renan.  Renan  wrote  with  some 
of  the  qualities  which  M.  Bergson  displays  in  speaking, 
but  he  was  more  envied  for  writing  than  for  feeling  like 
a  man  of  the  classical  ages.  M.  Bergson  would  be 
followed  even  if  he  never  wrote  a  line.  Here,  again,  we 
see  the  deep  reaction  which  differentiates  the  beginning 
of  the  twentieth  century  from  the  end  of  the  Romantic- 
ist period,  and  in  default  of  masterpieces  is  an  evidence 
of  the  return  to  the  ideal  which  gives  birth  to  master- 
pieces. 

3.     The  Restoration  of  Classical  Studies 

The  reform  of  the  haccalaureat  initiated  by  the 
decrees  of  1902  was  not  badly  received  at  first  by  the 
public.  Most  people  had  no  suspicion  that  its  spirit 
was  political,  and  it  was  not  easy  for  them  to  discrimi- 
nate between  that  which  in  the  reform  was  the  work  of 
professors  they  respected,  and  that  for  which  inexperi- 
enced politicians  at  the  Ministry  of  Education  were 
responsible.  The  novelty  of  the  arrangement  attracted 
as  it  always  does,  and  its  apparent  broadness  reassured. 
Latin  and  Greek  were  not  sacrificed ;  whoever  wished  to 
have  these  languages  taught  to  their  children  had  only  a 
word  to  say.  Many  a  father,  remembering  that  he  had 
always  been  poor  at  the  classics  and  entertaining  no 
delusions  about  the  use  he  made  of  them,  was  glad  that 
a  useless  burden  was  not  to  be  put  on  his  son.  Mothers 
rejoiced  at  the  comparative  facility  of  the  new  ex- 
aminations. Certainly  English  and  German  with  a 
governess  must  be  easier  than  Greek  with  formidable 
dictionaries.  During  seven  or  eight  years  few  protests 
were  heard  about  the  new  methods,  and  they  mostly 


Restoration  of  Classical  Studies       331 

came  from  writers  opposed  to  the  Government  and 
who  might  be  actuated  by  political  animosity.  Things 
changed  towards  1910,  after  the  reform  had  been  given 
its  full  chance  and  the  results  it  must  produce  had 
become  visible  in  young  men  of  from  eighteen  to  twenty- 
one  years  of  age.  A  strong  reaction  then  set  in,  and 
remonstrances  came  the  weight  of  which  could  not  be 
denied.  To  the  unbounded  astonishment  of  the  news- 
paper readers,  the  first  that  was  made  public  came  from 
quarters  where  it  had  been  little  expected.  This 
indictment,  couched  in  strong  and  remarkably  well- 
chosen  terms,  was  the  work  of  an  engineer,  M.  Guillain, 
holding  no  less  a  situation  than  the  presidency  of  French 
Forges  and  Furnaces.  This  gentleman  complained  to 
the  Ministry  of  Education  about  the  falling  off  he 
noticed  in  young  men  applying  to  him. 

It  was  a  serious  anxiety  for  people  interested  in  the  future 
of  French  industry  to  find  so  many  signs  of  weakened  culture 
in  these  young  engineers.  They  managed  to  get  passed  at 
the  entrance  examinations  for  the  Ecole  Polytechnique  or  the 
Ecole  Centrahj  but  they  were  not  prepared  for  making 
the  most  of  the  teaching  which  they  received  there,  and 
the  results  were  too  visible. 

Another  scientist,  M.  Lechevallier,  well  known 
among  the  best  mining  engineers,  substantiated  the 
same  complaints  in  an  admirable  tract  which  was 
widely  circulated,  and  which  the  present  writer  has 
been  several  times  both  delighted  and  siuprised  to  see 
in  almost  humble  homes  to  which  a  wise  decision  about 
the  boys'  education  is  of  paramount  importance. 
Almost  simultaneously  Raoul  Blondel,  M.D.,  declared 
that  his  experience  of  medical  students  led  him  to 
the  same  conclusions.     They  might  give  proofs  of  pre- 


332  The  Return  of  the  Light 

mature  erudition,  they  hardly  ever  gave  indications  of 
originality  or  of  that  curiosity  which  only  an  intelligent 
early  training  will  awake. 

On  the  whole,  good  judges  who  were  neither  professors 
nor  literary  people,  but  who  happened  to  be  in  a  place  of 
vantage  to  see  where  the  reform  of  1902  was  leading 
to,  held  it  responsible  for  a  weakening  of  acumen  which 
might  well  be  called  a  crisis  of  the  French  culture. 

The  phrase  promptly  became  a  watchword,  and  in  a 
short  time  another  was  frequently  associated  with  it. 
There  was  not  only  a  crisis  of  the  French  culture  but  a 
crisis  of  the  French  language  as  well,  and  this  time  it 
was  chiefly  noticed  by  professors  in  the  lycees  or  by 
examiners  for  the  haccalaureat.  The  rising  generation 
of  boys  were  uncertain  about  their  own  language;  they 
seldom  could  account  for  the  words  they  used  or  for  the 
meaning  they  attached  to  them,  and  they  seemed  to 
have  vague  notions  about  their  origins,  although  a  great 
deal  of  philological  zeal  was  spent  on  their  educa- 
tion. All  the  professors  who  thus  complained  traced  the 
lapse  to  the  neglect  of  Latin  as  its  chief  cause.  The 
boys  trained  exclusively  in  translating  from  or  into 
modern  languages  and  in  the  reading  of  French  texts 
appeared  to  be  little  helped  by  their  translations,  and 
certainly  got  little  out  of  their  French  reading.  The 
latter  exercise  was  too  easy  to  do  when  superficial,  and 
too  difficult  to  force  on  the  boy's  attention  when  more 
thorough,  to  be  of  any  great  use.  The  persevering  com- 
parison between  French  and  its  parent  language,  which 
the  old  syllabus  made  of  daily  use  during  six  or  seven 
years,  was  far  more  effective  than  any  superimposed 
philology.  Nothing  else  would  counteract  the  influence 
of  slovenly  spoken  French  or  of  the  fleshless  language 
which  the  newspaper  spreads  everywhere. 


Restoration  of  Classical  Studies       333 

The  French  Academy,  the  Societe  des  Gens  de  Lettres, 
and  two  leagues — one  of  which  was  called  Ligue  des 
Amis  du  Latin  and  the  Ligue  pour  la  Culture  Classique — 
echoed  the  professors'  alarm,  and  a  few  answers  to  their 
statements  even  by  men  Hke  M.  Croiset  and  M. 
Lanson  seemed  timid  compared  to  the  universal  protest. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  the  return  to  the  classical 
models  begun  by  M.  Anatole  France  acted  powerfully 
on  the  public.  The  elegance  of  thousands  of  these 
imitations  not  only  struck  the  readers,  but  somehow  the 
connection  between  this  style  and  the  traditional  grace 
of  the  best  French  language  could  not,  they  realized  it, 
be  divorced  from  the  classic  French  education.  In  a 
short  time  the  effects  of  this  movement  of  public 
opinion  became  apparent.  The  Government — that  is 
to  say,  the  bureaucracy  at  the  Ministry  of  Education — 
of  course  did  not  show  any  signs  of  having  met  with 
this  resistance  in  the  country.  The  decrees  of  1902  were 
not  repealed,  and  the  syllabus  remained  the  same.  But 
the  parents  did  of  their  own  accord  what  the  state  did 
not  encourage  them  to  do  except  in  the  anonymous 
advice  of  many  headmasters.  At  the  present  moment 
9  per  cent,  more  boys  take  Latin  than  before  the 
reform  of  1902,  and  it  becomes  shameful  once  more  to 
be  foreign  to  the  classical  culture.  Let  a  return  to  the 
more  virile  methods  in  the  teaching  of  Greek  and  Latin, 
of  which  there  are  many  signs,  become  more  general, 
and  some  day,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  official,  and  the  intel- 
lectual inheritance  of  France  will  be  in  safety.  A  classic 
formation  on  the  broad  human  bases  which  the  Uni- 
versite  had  laid  for  it  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  sure  to  make  the  French  conscious  of  their 
best  characteristics  and  to  replace  them  in  their  most 
natural  tradition. 


334  The  Return  of  the  Light 

Conclusion 

On  the  whole,  the  French  as  a  nation  seem  to  be 
recovering  from  several  very  dangerous  diseases:  the 
criticisms  of  the  Revolution  by  men  like  Taine  and 
Sorel,  the  revelation  of  the  snares  hidden  in  the  Decla- 
ration of  the  Rights  of  Man,  the  sickening  abuse  of 
beautiful  words  like  "Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity"  in 
the  service  of  very  sordid  interests,  the  transformation 
by  Syndicalism  of  a  problem  long  considered  as  in- 
dividual into  a  system  of  corporative  claims,  the  sudden 
realization,  after  Tangier,  that  a  nation  is  not  a  col- 
i/-    itection  of  independent  individuals,  but  a  society;  the 

\/y\jjr  reintegration  of  the  past  into  the  habitual  thoughts  of 
k^.  the   citizens  by   Barresian   literature  have  gradually 

•/  cured  the  French  of  the  individualistic  point  of  view 

made  popular  by  Rousseau;  their  tendency,  in  the 
presence  of  any  political  event  or  of  an  idea  with  enough 
in  it  to  make  it  yeasty,  is  less  to  examine  how  far  the 
individual  may  be  affected  by  it  than  how  far  it  will 
promote  or  hinder  the  public  welfare;  they  have  re- 
sumed the  habit  of  viewing  European  politics  in  the 
terms  of  two  hundred  years  ago,  saying  "the  interest  of 
France,"  "the  doings  of  Prussia,"  as  if  each  Frenchman 
were  an  ambassador  speaking  for  his  whole  cotintry, 
and  not  a  humanitarian  innocent  of  frontier  ques- 
tions. There  are  still  parties  in  France,  but  all  except 
one — the  Radical-Socialists — are  agreed  that  building 
up  the  politics  of  a  coimtry  on  its  internal  divisions  is 
the  mistake  of  men  who  ought  to  be  municipal  coun- 
cillors in  their  village  and  not  the  leaders  of  a  nation. 
Socialism  and  Syndicalism  may  be  sometimes  the  cham- 
pions of  rights,  oftener  the  supporters  of  disorder;  they 
have  ceased  to  be  either  bugbears  or  dazing-mirrors. 


Conclusion  335 

Finally,  war  itself  has  lost  the  power  which  defeat, 
combined  with  a  poor  philosophy  and  with  the  increas- 
ing abhorrence  of  all  discomfort,  had  conferred  upon  its 
very  name.  The  French,  having  in  1910  honestly 
wished  for  a  call  to  arms  which  would  have  been  purely 
patriotic,  on  that  day,  we  may  hope,  laid  for  ever  the 
ghost  of  1870. 

If  we  reflect  that  under  the  Second  Empire  and  later 
— ^as  soon  as  the  Third  Republic  was  well  established — 
France  was  a  very  hotbed  of  fallacies  sometimes  con- 
cealed, sometimes  embodied  in  politics,  it  will  appear 
that  few  countries  have  made  so  much  progress  in  the 
direction  of  common  good  sense  and  patriotic  energy 
as  this  country  has  in  the  past  ten  years,  and  a  glance 
at  the  regress  visible  elsewhere  will  make  the  advance 
even  more  striking. 

All  this  nobody  seems  to  question,  and  the  German 
press  itself  not  only  admits  but,  when  it  serves  its 
interests,  exaggerates.  What  people  capable  of  reflec- 
tion ask  themselves,  from  sympathy  or  from  racial 
opposition,  is:  Whether  this  convalescence  will  result  in 
recovery  or  in  a  relapse. 

Nations,  like  individuals,  have  moods,  and  if  the 
laws  of  their  changes  are  even  more  difficult  to  ascer- 
tain than  those  of  psychology,  we  know  that  they  must 
exist,  and  we  often  feel  as  if  we  were  near  discovering 
them.  Intellectual  principles  are  deeply  rooted  in  their 
proper  soil,  i.  e.,  the  minds  equal  to  the  effort  of  nour- 
ishing and  not  merely  receiving  them,  but  impressions 
and  impulses  are  fugitive  in  the  souls  of  the  multitude. 
Will  the  ideas  of  the  few  be  strong  enough  and  stay 
bright  enough  to  support  and  enlighten  the  impulses 
of  the  many,  or,  on  the  contrary,  will  not  the  non- 
chalance of  the  millions  obscure  these  lights  in  its  lazy 


33^  The  Return  of  the  Light 

vapour?  France  has  had  moods  before:  in  1876,  when 
the  Republican  spirit  swept  away  the  germ  of  political 
good  sense  planted  by  Thiers  and  by  the  Due  de 
Broglie;  in  1889,  after  the  Boulangist  agitation;  in  1898, 
when  what  was  already  called  the  esprit  nouveau  blew 
over  in  a  few  months,  and  strainings  after  reason, 
justice,  and  courage  were  seen  to  come  to  nought.  Are 
there  more  reasons  this  time  to  hope  that  the  soul  will 
lift  up  the  body  instead  of  being  dragged  down  by  it? 
The  threat  of  a  war  for  which  she  was  unprepared 
sobered  France  when  she  was  intoxicated  with  false 
ideas,  and  roused  her  when  she  was  for  indulging  in 
dreams;  but  if  the  war  does  not  come,  and  if  the  danger 
passes  away,  is  it  not  probable  that  with  peace  and 
indolence  the  old  taste  for  dangerous  speculation  will 
come  back? 

These  are  the  questions  which  we  hear,  and  which 
English  people  especially  frequently  ask  because  their 
civilization,  apart  from  any  transient  poHtical  condi- 
tions, makes  them  value  a  healthy  France.  It  is  re- 
markable that,  along  with  them,  another  is  often  put, 
and  nearly  always  understood,  "Will  your  Government 
follow  suit?"  or  again,  "What  sort  of  a  Government 
do  you  think  you  have  at  present?" 

Travelling  in  Germany  in  1805,  Madame  de  Stael 
experienced  a  similar  uncertainty.  She  saw  that  the 
Germans  had  a  sublime  philosophy,  canonizing  the  will 
and  pregnant  with  heroism,  and  yet  they  were  cringing 
and  unmanly,  "using  philosophy  to  account  for  that 
which  is  the  most  incompatible  with  philosophy ;  respect 
for  brute  force,  and  the  melting  timorousness  which 
transmutes  this  respect  into  admiration."  She  fully 
realized  that  the  political  state  of  Germany  was  re- 
sponsible for  this  weakness,  and  prayed  for  the  advent 


Conclusion  337 

of  free  institutions  to  raise  the  manners  to  the  level  cf 
the  theories.  What  would  she  have  said  if,  instead  of 
having  to  do  with  a  philosophy  of  liberty  confronted 
with  despotism  of  a  mild  nature,  she  had  seen  a  philo- 
sophy of  reasonableness,  courage,  and  self-denial  at  work 
in  a  democratic,  and  we  may  well  say,  a  demagogic 
country?  Surely  she  would  have  realized  that  heroism 
is  in  great  jeopardy  in  a  community  governed  by  men 
whose  interest  it  is  to  flatter  weaknesses,  and  she  would 
have  said  out  loud  what  the  EngHsh  observer  politely 
refrains  from  speaking  but  thinks  all  the  same,  and 
thinks  so  continuously  that  we  cannot  but  be  conscious 
of  the  thought:  "Shall  you  have  better  men  to  make 
the  most  of  your  better  spirit?" 

It  is  to  this  question  that  the  last  part  of  this  book 
will  be  dedicated. 

aa 


PART  III 
THE  POLITICAL  PROBLEMS  AND  THE  FUTURE 


339 


PART  III 

THE  POLITICAL  PROBLEMS  AND  THE  FUTURE 

I.     The  Problem  of  the  Two  Spirits 

The  problem  which  puzzled  Madame  de  Stael  during 
her  stay  in  Germany  in  1805  was:  How  is  it  that  a 
philosophy  of  the  will  does  not  produce  energetic  men? 
The  problem  which  has  been  hatmting  the  mind  of 
every  Frenchman  capable  of  thought  since  the  Tangier 
incident  and  its  terrifying  effects  has  been :  Will  this 
philosophy  of  coin-age  and  order  espoused  more  or  less 
consciously  by  the  immense  majority  of  the  nation 
get  the  better  of  the  inferior  tendencies  still  at  work 
in  the  swampy  confusion  of  French  demagogism? 

In  the  early  months  of  19 13,  when  it  became  known 
that  against  all  probability  and  above  all  in  spite  of 
the  fury  of  the  Radical  party,  M.  Poincare,  then  Prime 
Minister,  intended  to  stand  for  the  Presidency,  the 
problem  was  put  in  purely  political  terms  and  seemed 
exceedingly  simple:  Will  M.  Poincare  get  in  in  spite 
of  the  Radicals?  For  a  few  weeks  the  Prime  Minister 
who  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  appear  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Balkan  War  as  a  statesman  of  international 
celebrity,  and  who  stood  in  his  own  coimtry  for  a  reso- 
lute military  reform  as  the  basis  of  an  effective  patriotic 

341       _. 


342  The  Political  Problems 

action,  embodied  all  that  was  highest  in  the  aspirations 
of  France. 

An  incident  which,  it  is  true,  could  not  be  overlooked, 
cooled  the  enthusiasm  of  some  of  his  most  hopeful  ad- 
mirers. The  ablest  Minister  in  M.  Poincare*s  Govern- 
ment was  undoubtedly  M.  Millerand,  to  whom  the 
French  army  owes  more  gratitude  than  to  any  general 
who  has  held  office  since  1875.  Now  M.  Millerand, 
having  discharged  a  duty  of  common  honesty  in  re- 
deeming a  promise  made  to  M.  du  Paty  de  Clam — the 
well-known  anti-Dreyfusist — by  the  Minister  who  had 
preceded  him,  was  violently  attacked  for  doing  so. 
Another  member  of  the  Cabinet,  M.  Pams,  arraigned 
his  colleague  in  the  Chamber,  and  M.  Millerand  felt 
compelled  to  resign  at  the  very  moment  when  his  action 
was  the  most  useful.  M.  Poincare  did  not  shield  his 
Minister  of  War,  and  many  people  were  unpleasantly 
surprised  at  this  passivity.  Yet,  as  M.  Poincare  and 
M.  Millerand  were  personal  friends,  the  opinion  gradu- 
ally prevailed  that  M.  Millerand  himself  had  insisted 
on  M.  Poincar6's  taking  no  steps  lest  an  interference 
on  his  behalf  should  be  in  the  way  of  his  election  as 
President.  At  any  rate  when,  a  few  weeks  afterwards, 
M.  Poincar6  declared  his  intention  to  stand  for  the 
Presidency,  his  candidature  was  welcomed  as  the  dawn 
of  salvation  by  all  Frenchmen  thinking  more  of  the 
interests  of  their  country  than  of  petty  party  intrigues; 
and  when  the  Radicals  selected  as  an  opponent  to  him 
the  incarnation  of  party  politics,  M.  Pams,  the  situa- 
tion was  as  clear  as  could  be  and  highly  exciting. 

For  the  first  time  since  the  election  of  Grevy  in  1879, 
a  Presidential  election,  though  left — ^according  to  the 
constitution — to  the  Deputies  and  Senators  in  Congress, 
happened  to  be  a  national  affair,  and  M.  Poincare  had 


Problem  of  the  Two  Spirits  343 

on  his  side  the  majority  of  the  nation  while  M.  Pams 
was  merely  the  man  of  straw  of  the  Radicals.  M. 
Poincare  was  elected,  and  during  a  few  months  the 
country  felt  as  if  all  its  best  tendencies,  now  simimed  up 
in  one  providential  individual,  were  beyond  the  danger 
of  untimely  blighting. 

From  the  very  day  of  the  election  there  was  no 
doubt  that  the  Radicals  would  never  forgive  M.  Poin- 
care, and  that  in  the  impossibility  or  quasi-impossibil- 
ity  of  ousting  him  they  would  at  all  events  fight  all  his 
friends  and  impugn  the  ideas  supposed  to  be  dearest  to 
him,  viz.,  Proportional  Representation,  the  Three- Year 
Military  Law,  and  above  all,  a  rapprochement  with  the 
moderate  elements  in  Parliament  recalling  the  far- 
away days  of  M.  Meline.  The  country  at  large  took 
in  the  situation  and  there  was  no  uncertainty  as  to  its 
preferences.  The  welcome  which  the  President  re- 
ceived everywhere  during  his  tour  in  the  South  of  France 
at  the  end  of  the  simimer  of  19 13  was  full  of  significance. 
It  clearly  meant:  At  last  France  has  a  President  who 
is  her  representative  and  not  merely  the  representative 
of  politicians.  Having  been  elected  constitutionally  he 
can  be  loved  without  treason,  and  his  enemies  may  be 
regarded  as  the  enemies  of  the  country.  So  the  over- 
throw of  M.  Briand  by  the  Senate  on  the  question  of 
Proportional  Representation  was  resented  as  an  inso- 
lence. However,  it  was  not  looked  upon  as  a  personal 
defeat  of  the  President.  M.  Barthou,  who  succeeded 
M.  Briand,  was  as  much  as  the  latter  in  perfect  unity 
of  views  with  M.  Poincar6.  Certainly  he  was  not  sup- 
posed to  be  as  energetic  as  the  President.  He  was  a 
clever,  graceful  Southerner,  not  a  stem  Lorrain.  Yet 
it  soon  appeared  that  this  pleasant,  genial  man  was  not 
to  be  shaken  from  his  position  on  at  least  one  vital 


344  The  Political  Problems 

measure,  the  Three- Year  Service  Law,  and  people 
universally  concluded  that  the  indomitable  courage 
he  showed  in  defending  this  Bill  was  instilled  into  him 
by  the  President  himself. 

The  overthrow  of  M.  Barthou  in  December,  1913, 
therefore,  came  as  a  shock,  and  when  M.  Poincar6  gave 
his  succession  apparently  to  M.  Doimiergue  but  in 
reality  to  M.  Caillaux — one  of  his  sworn  enemies — 
there  was  dismay.  Some  keener  observers  than  the 
rest  had  already  felt  misgivings  at  noticing  that  the 
President  would  not  take  upon  himself  to  remove,  or 
in  some  way  intimidate,  any  of  the  numerous  prefects, 
who  he  must  know  were  Radicals  and  likely  to  turn 
against  rather  than  serve  him ;  some  Catholic  journalists 
had  also  pointed  out  with  surprise  that  the  President, 
who  had  agreed  to  act  as  witness  at  the  marriage  of  a 
friend,  had  refused  to  go  further  than  the  mairie,  and 
shirked  the  Church  in  true  Combist  bigotry.  This  was 
not  all;  during  the  trip  in  the  South,  M.  Poincar6  had 
not  dared  to  visit  the  old  Romanesque  church  of  Saint- 
Front  at  Perigueux,  lest  such  a  step  should  be  inter- 
preted as  a  clerical  manifestation.  There  was  certainly 
an  exaggeration  of  prudence  in  this.  However,  nobody 
had  supposed  that  the  President — ^who  apparently  real- 
ized, when  he  stood  for  his  high  position,  that  the 
situation  was  such  that  he  must  face  his  responsibilities 
in  a  different  spirit  from  that  of  his  predecessors — 
would  accept  a  change  of  Cabinet  obviously  directed 
against  him,  without  a  word,  without  an  effort,  in  the 
humble  spirit  of  the  Constitution  of  1875,  and  exactly 
as  M.  Fallieres  might  have  done.  Some  people  will  ask: 
"What  could  he  do?  Dissolving  the  Chamber  was  out 
of  the  question,  as  it  cannot  be  done  by  the  President 
without  the  concurrence  of  the  Senate;  even  a  message, 


Problem  of  the  Two  Spirits  345 

even  a  speech,  clear  enough  to  be  more  than  banal, 
would  have  amounted  to  a  coup  d'etat.  *' 

Precisely.  The  situation  forced  upon  the  chief  of  the 
State  by  the  Constitution  of  1875,  and  above  all  by  the 
interpretation  of  it  by  ten  jealous  Parliaments  in  suc- 
cession, gives  the  President  no  choice  between  a  some- 
what daring  attitude  and  complete  self-effacement.  M. 
Poincare  has  chosen  the  latter,  and  neither  he  nor  any 
of  the  supporters  of  his  policy  of  silence  can  protest 
against  the  effacement  having  been  immediate  and 
complete.  Popularity  never  seeks  failure,  and  the  suc- 
cess of  M.  Caillaux  appeared,  even  to  the  rudest  peasant, 
as  the  President's  defeat. 

No  Englishman  living  in  France  can  have  felt  other- 
wise than  as  if  the  curtain  had  fallen  on  the  career  of  the 
brilliant  Poincare  one  had  imagined,  and  the  gang  of 
the  professional  politicians  was  coming  to  the  forefront 
again.  The  general  election  of  19 14  only  made  this 
situation  clearer;  it  was  hardly  construed  as  a  defeat 
of  M.  Poincare — though  in  reality  it  was  one — but 
that  was  because  M.  Poincare  had  practically  dis- 
appeared from  the  stage.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  that, 
having  lost  the  opportunities  which  universal  popular- 
ity offered  him  in  the  first  year  of  his  Presidency,  he 
will  seize  others  which  will  not  be  half  so  encouraging, 
and  we  may  conclude  that  he  will  be,  like  his  predeces- 
sors, a  mere  Constitutional  President,  that  is  to  say,  a 
President  with  power  enough  to  appoint  the  Prime 
Ministers  whom  the  Chamber  wishes,  but  with  no 
power  to  control  either  the  Premier  or  the  Chamber. 
If  the  Premiers  are  congenial,  his  intelligence  and  ex- 
perience, along  with  his  patriotism,  which  nothing  can 
weaken,  will  give  him  influence,  but  it  will  be  the  timid 
influence  which  alone  is  in  keeping  with  the  Constitu- 


34^  The  Political  Problems 

tion;  if  they  are  inimical,  the  awkwardness  of  his 
position  will  only  emphasize  the  impossibility  of  shak- 
ing the  tyranny  of  the  majority.  In  any  case,  he  will 
never  be  again,  unless  he  should  make  a  coup  d^etatt 
the  representative  of  the  generous  spirit  which  uplifted 
France  and  gathered  every  energy  around  him  while  he 
was  Prime  Minister. 

Does  this  mean  that  this  spirit  is  doomed  to  die  away 
and  leave  France  once  more  as  she  was  between  1898 
and  1905,  without  a  national  ideal  or  without  the 
courage  to  realize  it?  Not  by  any  means.  The  im- 
pulse given  at  Tangier,  along  with  the  slow  but  steady 
reintegration  of  healthy  notions  into  public  opinion,  is 
evidently  one  of  the  events  which  history  uses  as  land- 
marks, and  which  the  disappearance  of  an  individual 
only  affects  in  a  transient  manner.  France  has  been 
so  long  waiting  for  a  man,  a  real  man,  that  whoever 
succeeds  in  voicing  her  aspiration  after  order  at  home 
and  dignity  abroad,  and  in  securing  power  were  it  only 
for  a  short  time,  will  be  welcomed  as  M.  Poincar6 
himself  was.  M.  Briand,  M.  Barthou,  above  all,  M. 
Millerand — ^by  far  the  clearest  head  and  the  strongest 
hand  this  country  has  known  since  1870,  outside  of  the 
army — ^have,  each  one  in  succession,  been  that  man, 
and  may  play  the  same  part  again.  There  may  be 
others  less  known  whom  national  feeling  would  be  only 
too  ready  to  acclaim.  Two  or  three  speeches  showing 
character  as  well  as  rare  abilities  have  been  enough 
to  place  M.  Andre  Lefevre — ^until  then  a  comparatively 
obscure  Deputy — apart  from  the  rest. 

But  will  the  return  of  even  these  men  to  office  mean 
the  entrance  of  France  into  smooth  waters  and  the  end 
of  nearly  half  a  century  of  confusion?  It  might  be  so  if 
some  fortimate  transformation  of  the  Chamber  should 


Problem  of  the  Two  Spirits  347 

give  it  the  unity  on  a  few  vital  points  which  made  the 
Assemhlee  Nationale  an  effective  collaborator  of  Thiers 
after  the  War  and  Commune,  but  until  this  transfor- 
mation happens,  "  clearings-up "  will  only  be  intervals 
of  respite,  after  which  the  usual  depression  will  set  in 
again.  The  anxiety  and  lassitude  evident  in  the  utter- 
ances of  such  undoubted  Republicans  as  M.  de  Lanessan, 
the  former  Minister  of  the  Navy;  M.  Sembat,  the  bril- 
liant Socialist,  and  M.  du  Mesnil,  the  Radical  editor  of 
the  Rappel,  are  shared  by  millions  of  their  readers. 
The  root  of  the  evil  is  in  a  system  which  tolerates  the 
occasional  appearance  of  distinguished  men — welcomed 
for  the  time  being  as  liberators — but  will  not  give  them 
any  real  authority.  As  long  as  the  Chamber  remains 
supreme  in  France,  discarding  or  selecting  governments 
as  it  pleases  without  either  the  President  or  the  Senate 
being  able  to  act  as  counterweights,  and  as  long  as  the 
same  Assembly  thus  all-powerful  consists  of  individuals 
trembling  before  their  electors  on  one  hand  and  regard- 
ing one  another  as  the  members  of  one  great  syndicate 
on  the  other,  an  enormous  mass  of  excellent  work  (in 
the  shape  of  reports  and  commission  work,  especially) 
will  be  wasted,  the  wishes  of  the  better  class  of  citizens 
will  be  nullified,  and  the  presence  of  a  few  men  really 
worth  while  at  the  head  of  the  Government  will  only 
last  long  enough  to  make  their  defeat  more  disappoint- 
ing. There  will  ever  be  an  indestructible  opposition 
between  the  representatives  of  the  elector  and  the 
representatives  of  France ;  a  national  spirit  can  have  no 
chances  with  men  rising  from  the  "stagnant  pools," 
nor  will  a  truly  national  policy  be  carried  on  by  Cabi- 
nets everlastingly  changing  and  in  the  power  of  the 
groups  in  the  Chamber.  The  experiment  initiated  in 
1876  has  now  lasted  long  enough  for  sure  conclusions 


348  The  Political  Problems 

to  be  arrived  at,  and  the  main  conclusion  is  that  the 
Constitution  of  1875,  ^^  its  essence  as  well  as  in  its 
working,  invariably  proves  productive  either  of  anarchy 
or  of  tyranny,  and  sometimes  of  both  at  the  same  time, 
as  was  the  fact  under  the  Combes  government.  The 
history  of  France  compared  with  that  of  Italy,  for 
instance,  in  the  last  half  century,  is  a  demonstration  of 
the  danger  of  a  bad  constitution.  ^ 

The  inference  is  plain;  something  must  be  done  to 
modify  a  state  of  things  about  which  there  is  no  im- 
certainty,  and  this  change,  whatever  its  conditions  and 
particular  character,  cannot  but  be  in  the  direction  of  a 
stronger  authority  and  of  greater  stability.  The  na- 
tional defence  can  no  longer  be  left  to  the  pleasure  of 
fourscore  of  demagogues;  the  foreign  policy  must  be 
something  better  than  the  routine  of  the  bureaux  or  the 
random  speculation  of  a  new  Minister;  it  must  become 
impossible  that  a  man  of  M.  Poincare's  talent  and 
position  should  lose  all  his  effectiveness  merely  because 
he  ceases  to  be  in  the  immediate  dependence  of  the 
Deputies.  In  one  word,  authority  and  responsibility 
must  be  something  else  than  words. 

2.    Is  a  Change  of  Regime  probable  in  France  ? 

If  we  were  to  believe  the  many  people  who,  in  book, 
magazine,  or  newspaper,  take  their  desires  for  realities, 
and  unconsciously  interpret  their  own  disgust  as  an 
infallible  sign  of  the  times,  there  would  be  no  doubt ;  a 
change  must  not  only  appear  inevitable,  but  it  could 
not  be  very  far  off.  The  formula  at  which  all  these 
sanguine  people  have  arrived  and  which  they  repeat 
in  the  newspapers  every  day  is:  Either  a  change  or  a 
crash. 


A  Change  of  Regime  349 

Are  they  right  in  their  anticipation? 

It  does  not  appear  clear  to  everybody.  It  is  not 
because  the  present  system  has  given  numberless 
proofs  of  its  rottennes  that  it  cannot  go  on.  In  fact, 
it  was  rotten  from  the  first,  and  it  has  had  not  croakers, 
but  clear-sighted  critics  round  its  very  cradle.  It  is  not 
because  an  institution  is  obviously  imperfect  that  it 
cannot  persist  through  a  long  historical  period.  The 
Ancien  Regime  dragged  on  for  many  a  decade  after  its 
death  had  been  prophesied.  Why  has  the  Republic 
managed  to  live  since  the  establishment  of  its  ruinous 
constitution?  Because  its  very  constitution  makes  it 
almost  impossible  for  the  country  to  bring  about  a 
change  otherwise  than  through  a  sort  of  personal 
conversion,  and  such  conversions  are  impossible  to  a 
nation.  The  vice  of  the  constitution  lies  in  the  sub- 
ordination of  every  power  to  the  Chamber,  but  it  is  the 
country  which  elects  the  Chamber,  and  there  have  been 
so  far  no  sufficient  motives  at  the  moment  of  an  election 
to  bring  home  to  the  Electorate  the  necessity  of  a 
change.  If  a  war  were  imminent,  or  if  bankruptcy 
could  evidently  not  be  staved  off  much  longer,  or  if 
business  were  flat  while  taxation  was  high,  perhaps — 
it  is  not  certain — the  elector  might  be  persuaded  to 
choose  less  selfish  and  other  representatives,  and,  even 
without  a  change  of  constitution,  such  men  might  find 
in  their  convictions  the  unity  of  purpose  which — 
whatever  the  constitution  may  be — insures  order  and 
stability.  The  sight  of  mere  corruption  is  not  enough 
to  produce  this  effect;  the  French  have  seen  the  Gr6vy 
and  Wilson  affair,  the  Panama  affair,  the  Dreyfus  con- 
fusion, even  the  recklessness  of  the  Combes  administra- 
tion with  its  scandalous  disregard  of  common  honesty 
as  well  as  its  indifference  to  national  security;  and  all 


350  The  Political  Problems 

this  has  not  been  enough,  because  the  cause  of  the  evil 
once  removed — Grevy  resigning  or  Combes  being  re- 
moved from  office  by  M.  Clemenceau — the  country 
finds  itself  in  the  presence  of  a  Protean  power — ^which  is 
after  all,  its  very  image — ^and  immediately  becomes 
helpless.  The  dispersed  consciousness  of  twelve  mil- 
lions of  electors  cannot  be  expected  to  be  more  active 
than  the  consciousness  of  six  hundred  deputies. 

If  then,  the  danger  of  a  war  can  be  put  off  either  by 
Germany  expanding  in  directions  where  she  will  have 
few  chances  of  encountering  France,  or  by  the  Socialist 
influence  in  the  Chamber  averting  causes  of  friction 
at  the  cost  of  national  dignity;  if,  as  the  past  makes  it 
probable,  taxation  can  be  raised  much  higher  than  it  is 
and  the  public  debt  may  be  expected  to  rise  in  the  same 
proportion  as  it  has  done  since  1875;  if,  as  is  also  prob- 
able, the  commercial  expansion  of  Germany  and  Amer- 
ica does  not  cramp  for  a  long  time  the  opportunities 
of  French  trade,  the  country  may  continue  to  live  for 
years  more  in  its  indifference  to  politics.  Of  course 
France  will  suffer;  her  influence  abroad  cannot  but  go 
on  rapidly  dwindling,  ruinous  treaties  may  deprive  her 
of  colony  after  colony,  her  Exchequer  may  appear  more 
and  more  as  a  formidable  wager  laid  by  Levity  against 
Probability,  but  the  crash,  as  it  is  called,  may  not 
come  for  years  and  years,  say  until  Italy  is  strong 
enough  to  do  what  Germany  would  not  have  done. 

This  is  the  answer  which  many  people  give  to  those 
who  will  see  no  alternative  between  a  change  and  a 
crash. 

Theoretically  this  answer  cannot  be  refuted;  if  the 
past  foreshadows  the  future  it  may  be  the  lot  of  the 
present  generation  to  witness  no  change  and  yet  see  no 
crash  either.    But  the  formula  "A  change  or  a  crash*' 


A  Change  of  Regime  351 

has  too  much  of  the  epigram  or  even  the  jingle  of  words 
in  its  sound  to  serve  as  a  basis  for  a  serious  discussion. 
The  true  question  is:  Are  there  any  indications  of  a 
change?  And  if  a  change  really  takes  place,  what  is  it 
likely  to  be?  So  worded  it  brings  us  from  the  realm  of 
possibilities  to  that  of  probabilities,  and  we  immediately 
see  various  facts  which  hardly  anybody  is  inclined  to 
question,  and  upon  which  we  can  build  solidly. 

Let  us  recapitulate  these  facts. 

The  first  and  not  the  least  important  is  the  existence 
in  the  national  atmosphere  of  a  longing,  a  sort  of 
Messianic  expectation  of  a  better  state  of  affairs  than 
the  present  one.  It  may  be  only  the  proof  that  the 
French  are  not  yet  ripe  for  the  intelligent  use  of  what 
they  call  their  liberty.  The  yearning  after  some  in- 
definite rescuer  belongs  to  undeveloped  natures  and 
negatives  all  that  self-reliance  and  all  that  independence 
of  judgment  which  are  supposed  to  be  the  moral  accom- 
paniment in  the  individual  of  the  democratic  progress 
in  a  community.  Certainly  if  the  French  elector,  in- 
stead of  being  content  with  giving  his  vote  once  every 
four  years,  on  no  particular  issue  but  exclusively  on  one 
particular  person  about  whom  he  is  generally  full  of 
doubts,  were  better  aware  of  what  he  really  wants,  and 
understood  how  he  can  get  it  by  the  judicious  use  of  the 
right  of  association,  he  would  trust  himself  and  nobody 
else,  or  if  he  looked  for  a  man  it  would  be  a  servant,  or 
at  best  a  champion,  not  a  protector.  However  it  may 
be,  the  fact  is  that  France  wants  a  new  order  of  things, 
and  is  more  or  less  conscious  that  her  present  woes  are 
the  product  of  her  bad  constitution. 

Some  people  will  have  it  that  it  is  an  exaggeration  to 
say  that  France  wants  a  Rescuer,  that  is  to  say,  ulti- 
mately a  Master;  she  only  feels  the  want  of  an  author- 


352  The  Political  Problems 

ity  and  looks  for  it  everywhere  without  confusing  it  with 
the  personal  influence  of  an  individual.  It  may  be  so, 
but  practically  the  two  nuances  are  almost  indiscernible. 
Throughout  her  history  France  has  shown  a  taste  for 
strong  men,  and  the  moment  she  felt  that  the  Republi- 
can constitution  which  has  fallen  to  her  lot  was  an- 
tagonistic to  powerful  individuals,  but  favoured  the 
tyranny  of  a  kind  of  nondescript  oligarchy,  this  taste 
reappeared.  The  popularity  of  Boulanger  in  1886,  of 
Rouvier  and  Clemenceau — unpopular  as  they  had  been 
— in  the  years  following  the  Tangier  incident,  of  M. 
Poincare  in  1912,  are  well-known  instances  of  this 
propensity. 

In  spite  of  long  years  of  anti-militarism,  the  French 
have  never  lost  their  partiality  for  the  brilliant 
soldier.  After  Boulanger  it  was  Marchand,  after 
Marchand,  Gallieni,  and  since  then  D'Amade  and  Ly- 
autey.  The  tendency  is  to  regard  a  successful  general, 
not  merely  as  a  brave  and  able  technician,  but  as  a 
rarely  gifted  man  who,  after  conquering  a  country, 
finds  no  difficulty  in  organizing  and  administrating  it, 
and  does  so  through  simple  methods  of  his  own  which 
the  plodding  intelligence  of  the  civilian  will  never  dis- 
cover. The  tradition  of  Bonaparte  is  still  alive,  and  the 
majority  of  Frenchmen  have  known  soldiers  who  came 
back  from  Algeria  full  of  admiration  for  the  genius  of 
Bugeaud  and  Lamorici^re. 

This  longing  for  energy,  coupled  with  the  admiration 
for  order,  which  has  become  part  once  more  of  the 
national  temperament  after  being  long  banished  from  it, 
shows  even  a  more  unexpected  effect;  it  has  gradually 
produced  a  sort  of  tacit  reconciliation  of  the  more  cul- 
tivated Frenchman  with  the  Monarchist  idea.  It  is  re- 
markable that  under  Louis  Philippe,  and  especially  imder 


A  Change  of  Regime  353 

Napoleon  the  Third,  the  Republican  idea  was  mostly 
upheld  by  the  bourgeoisie;  the  lower  classes  were  quite 
sufficiently  loyal  to  the  "citizen-king,"  and  enthusiasti- 
cally devoted  to  the  nephew  of  the  great  Emperor. 
To-day  the  situation  is  reversed;  after  years  of  aliena- 
tion— caused  mostly  by  the  recollections  of  18 14  and 
the  mistakes  of  Louis  XVIII  and  Charles  X — the 
bourgeoisie  J  apart  from  professional  politicians,  have 
become  estranged  from  the  Republic  and  have  assumed 
towards  the  possibility  of  a  restoration  a  neutral  atti- 
tude which  is  easily  changed  into  sympathy.  Sym- 
pathy would  probably  be  more  frequent  if  the  leaders 
of  the  Action  Frangaise  were  less  violent  under  pretence 
of  being  energetic,  and  above  all  less  noisy  under  pre- 
tence of  being  violent;  if  their  polemics  were  not 
constantly  personal,  and  if  purely  journalistic  denuncia- 
tions— often  built  on  frail  foundations — did  not 
occasionally  give  them  the  appearance  of  being  in  that 
crude  stage  of  party  spirit  in  which  determination  is 
so  resolute  as  to  disregard  good  faith. 

As  it  is,  they  possess  a  magnetism  for  many  young 
men,  and  have  diffused  a  number  of  arguments  in 
favour  of  traditionalism,  which,  presented  by  soberer  ex- 
ponents than  themselves,  slowly  penetrate  into  milieus 
which  the  Action  Frangaise  itself  does  not  reach  or 
would  immediately  repel. 

This  is  not  the  only  cause  of  a  modification  of  the 
bourgeoisie  towards  the  Monarchist  tradition.  In  fact 
there  are  many  others.  To  begin  with,  the  youthful 
sympathies  with  the  Republic  of  fifty  years  ago  have 
become  aged  and  wrinkled,  while  the  old  grievances 
against  the  Monarchy  were  sinking  more  and  more  into 
the  past.  Then  the  criticisms  against  the  insufficiency 
of  the  Republican  constitution  daily  read  in  newspapers 
33 


354  The  Political  Problems 

of  every  opinion  have  produced  a  simultaneous — though 
sometimes  unconscious — attention  to  the  advantages 
of  stronger  constitutions.  The  French  mind  has  risen 
from  the  vagueness  of  sympathies  and  antipathies  in 
which  shibboleths  and  formulae  kept  it  so  long  to  a  more 
lucid  examination  of  the  pros  and  cons  and  to  conclu- 
sions deserving  to  be  called  doctrines.  At  the  same 
time  the  remnants  of  Romanticist  phraseology,  which 
described  a  Monarch  in  the  words  of  Michelet  or  Victor 
Hugo  as  a  "tyrant  on  horseback,"  were  rapidly  be- 
coming ridiculous,  while  the  taste  of  Verlaine  for  the 
courtly  atmosphere  of  the  eighteenth  century  appeared 
to  be  shared  by  many  people  open  to  the  charm  of  old 
France.  Artists  are  full  of  it;  numberless  writers  can- 
not dissociate  it  from  the  style  they  prefer;  you  notice 
it  not  only  in  traditional  Englishmen  but  even  in  demo- 
cratic Americans,  with  whom  it  is  part  of  culture  and  a 
yearning  of  the  imagination.  In  short,  another  atmos- 
phere has  been  created  in  which  historic  considerations 
seem  totally  different  from  what  they  were  fifty  years 
ago.  For  a  long  time  there  existed  deep  in  the  French 
consciousness  an  antipathy  against  the  idle  aristocracy 
supposed  to  be  the  natural  environment  of  a  Monarchy. 
The  self-effacement  of  the  titled  classes  along  with  the 
evident  effort  of  some  of  their  representatives  to  make 
the  most  of  changed  circumstances  and  be  as  loyal  as 
they  could  to  modern  principles  has  dispelled  this  in 
part.  At  the  same  time  the  criticisms  of  industrial 
conditions  repeated  in  a  thousand  forms  by  the  Socialist 
writers  brought  it  home  to  the  workers  that  the  modern 
feudal  lord  is  the  manufacturer,  and  the  real  duke  the 
financier.  The  last  inherited  prejudices  are  rapidly 
disappearing  before  this  realization  of  concrete  facts. 
Perhaps  the  best  chance  of  the  Monarchy  lies  in  the 


A  Change  of  Regime  355 

observations  and  comparisons  which  the  taste  for  travel- 
ling now  common  to  all  social  classes  inevitably  pro- 
duces. For  many  years  the  French  had  a  bookish  habit 
of  attacking  or  defending  the  monarchical  institutions 
exclusively  from  historic  considerations.  The  writers 
on  the  Action  Franqaise  have  preserved  it,  and  it  is  a 
mistake  on  their  part,  for  the  evocation  of  long-dis- 
appeared conditions  does  not  help  in  making  up  one's 
mind  about  questions  of  the  vital  present.  Living 
comparisons  between  the  prosperity  and  the  policies 
of  the  countries  we  visit  and  those  of  our  own  country 
are  far  more  illuminating.  This  accounts  for  a  con- 
siderable mental  change  with  respect  to  the  monarchical 
institutions  in  people  who  have  frequently  been  abroad. 
Their  first  feeling,  when  they  have  grown  up  in  an 
exaggeratedly  Republican  milieu,  is  some  surprise  at 
finding  no  striking  difference  between  the  liberty  they 
enjoy  at  home,  and  that  which  they  find  beyond  the 
frontier.  They  never  feel  the  unpleasant  vicinity  of 
tyranny,  and  if  they  happen  to  see — in  Belgium,  for 
instance,  or  in  Scandinavia,  or  even  in  Germany — a 
more  frequent  and  more  conscious  use  of  the  right  of 
association  than  they  had  expected,  the  truth  is  sud- 
denly brought  home  to  them  that  liberty  is  only  a  word 
or  at  best,  an  aspiration,  while  liberties  are  positive 
rights  daily  exercised  and  valued  in  consequence.  From 
that  surprise  they  pass  easily  to  a  fair  examination  of 
the  connection  between  what  they  see  and  its  political 
causes;  if  their  minds  are  lazy  and  sceptical,  they  be- 
come confirmed  in  the  indifference  towards  the  form  of 
government  which  is  so  frequent  in  France  at  the  pres- 
ent day;  if  they  are  intellectually  more  virile,  it  is  not 
rare  to  see  them  arrive  at  definite  conclusions,  and 
declare   that   even   faulty    monarchical    constitutions 


356  The  Political  Problems 

appear  far  superior  in  their  effects  to  a  poor  system 
of  laws  decorated  with  the  name  of  constitution. 

This  is  generally  more  of  a  speculative  or  at  best 
expectant  attitude  than  a  conviction  ready  to  engender 
propagandism,  and  many  of  those  uncertain  converts 
would  be  as  ready  to  welcome  a  Napoleon  as  a  prince  of 
Orleans,  but  they  would  gladly  see  the  prospect  of  a 
change,  and  they  look  forward  to  it.  If  you  will  con- 
sider that  this  more  or  less  definite  aspiration,  after  a 
better  regime,  is  increased  by  the  universal  longing  for 
a  strong  man,  you  will  not  be  surprised  at  a  statement 
which  the  least  familiarity  with  the  background  makes 
almost  evident,  and  which  can  be  put  in  the  simplest 
terms,  viz.,  a  coup  d'etat  by  a  moderately  sympathetic 
person  not  only  would  meet  with  no  indignation,  but 
would  hardly  cause  any  surprise.  Vaguely,  I  admit, 
but  so  powerfully,  the  yearning  after  strength,  author- 
ity, and  order  has  taken  hold  of  the  best  French, 
especially  in  Paris,  that  a  coup  de  force  must  be  a 
habitual  if  semi-conscious  thought  with  them. 

Leaving  aside  for  the  present  the  possible  actors  in 
such  a  drama,  let  us  content  ourselves  with  trying  to 
imagine  the  conditions  in  which  it  would  take  place, 
and  the  feelings  with  which  it  would  be  received  in 
Paris.  Who  are  the  people  against  whom  this  violent 
operation  would  be  conducted?  Ask  anybody  living 
in  France;  his  embarrassment  will  show  you  at  once 
that  the  tyrant  one  would  have  to  get  rid  of,  is  not  very 
formidable.  It  is  not  the  President,  it  is  not  exactly 
the  Ministers,  though  some  might  be  objectionable,  it 
is  not  exactly  the  Chamber,  though  it  often  appears  as 
a  syndicate  of  dangerous  babblers,  and  though  the 
Constitution  works  its  worst  effects  through  it.  It  is 
rather  the  Senate,  because  the  Senate  has  negatived  a 


A  Change  of  Regime  357 

good  impulse  of  the  other  Assembly  on  at  least  one 
important  reform — the  Reform  of  the  Suffrage — ^and 
because  it  is  the  stronghold  of  the  Radicals,  who  once 
preferred  M.  Pams  to  M.  Poincare.  But  who  is  likely 
to  show  fight  in  the  Upper  Assembly?  Who  are  the 
influential  or  resolute  persons  whom  it  would  be 
dangerous  to  let  at  large  on  the  morrow  of  a  coup  d'Stat, 
because  they  might  summon  together  the  bravest  in  the 
two  Houses  and  try  to  form  a  centre  of  resistance 
somewhere?  The  list  is  so  short  that  it  appears  ridicu- 
lous. Yes,  if  the  resolute  man,  or  group  of  men  whom 
we  suppose,  were  to  lay  hold  of  a  dozen  individuals 
in  the  Chamber  and  Senate,  among  whom  M.  Clemen- 
ceau,  M.  Jaures,  and  M.  Caillaux  would  probably  be 
the  most  conspicuous — and  of  three  or  four  newspaper 
editors — perhaps  only  one  or  two — and  if  the  Parlia- 
mentary session  were  suspended  for  a  brief  period,  the 
whole  affair  would  appear  so  natural  as  to  be  little  more 
than  an  exciting  f ait-divers.  There  might  be  an  uncom- 
fortable feeling  in  the  public  if  the  newspapers  did  not 
appear  in  the  morning,  but  this  would  be  a  mistake 
which  no  intelligent  men  would  make,  and  with  papers 
to  give  them  the  particulars  of  the  operation,  the 
Parisians  would  be  so  pleased  that  long  before  noon 
they  would  be  enthusiastic.  Some  people  will  imagine 
that  the  Bourse  du  Travail  might  become  the  centre  of 
resistance  I  mentioned  above;  but  that  is  an  imagina- 
tion. The  Bourse  du  Travail  is  not  so  formidable  as 
it  used  to  be ;  M.  Barthou  had  it  searched  by  the  police 
in  the  last  months  of  1913,  and  several  of  its  chiefs  were 
imprisoned  without  much  protest;  as  to  the  supposed 
interest  which  these  syndicates  might  take  in  the 
Socialist  Deputies,  it  would  never  be  transmuted  into 
heroism,  and  of  this  the  Socialist  Deputies  themselves 


35^  The  Political  Problems 

entertain  little  doubt.  I  firmly  believe  that  a  fortnight 
after  the  coup  d'etat,  the  few  persons  whose  liberty 
might  have  been  temporarily  suppressed,  could  without 
any  danger  be  released.  The  more  one  thinks  over 
these  possibilities  the  more  one  sees  that  the  rampart 
between  a  dictator  and  his  success  is  neither  public 
opinion,  nor  any  strongly  organized  and  sufficiently 
popular  party,  but  a  Senate  and  Chamber  so  divided 
and  weak,  so  impregnated  themselves  with  the  belief 
in  a  change,  that  resistance  on  their  part  would  practi- 
cally be  impossible.  To  sum  up  in  one  brief  formula, 
both  the  tyrants  of  France  and  her  possible  liberator 
are  anonymous,  but  the  tyrant  is  a  cardboard  giant 
who  has  long  ceased  to  be  a  scarecrow,  while  the 
liberator  is  a  living  hope. 

The  conclusion  of  this  analysis  of  public  opinion 
seems  naturally  to  be:  a  coup  d'etat  or  a  coup  de  force 
cannot  be  long  delayed.  This  is  indeed  according  to  the 
logic  of  emotions,  and  shows  how  powerful  the  con- 
tagion of  a  widely-spread  belief  invariably  is;  but  the 
advisability  of  doing  a  thing  or  the  extreme  facility  for 
doing  it  is  only  one  element  in  the  psychology  of  those 
who  ought  to  do  it,  and  leaves  unaffected  the  probability 
or  improbability  of  their  accomplishing  it.  The  fact  is 
that  the  few  men  who  might  be  inclined  to  make  a 
coup  detat  in  France  are  not  likely  to  attempt  it, 
and  as  to  the  multitude  which  expects  this  from 
them,  it  is  in  that  state  of  expectation  which  is 
productive  of  effects  sometimes  amazing,  but  is 
seldom  rewarded  by  seeing  the  fulfilmenc  of  its  hopes. 
There  are  at  the  present  moment  two  of  those  pow- 
erful visions  acting  magnetically  upon  French  people; 
the  **  Grand  Soir'*  with  the  Syndicalists,  and  the  Re- 
storation with  the  Monarchists,  and,  although  the  latter 


A  Change  of  Regime  359 

has  immeasurably  better  chances  than  the  former,  it 
will  probably  be  a  cause  of  disappointment. 

A  coup  d'etat  in  the  stage  of  civilization  we  have 
reached,  with  the  organization  of  the  police,  the 
facilities  for  rapid  information  and  for  rapid  communi- 
cations, is  impossible  without  an  immediate  preparation 
which  makes  it  in  the  end  a  matter  of  course.  Now, 
the  Duke  of  Orleans  has  indeed  a  certain  number  of 
passionately  loyal  adherents,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  a 
great  many  other  people  are,  with  regard  to  his  possible 
advent,  in  a  state  of  friendly  neutrality  which  success 
would  rapidly  change  into  declared  sympathies;  but 
his  really  effective  friends  are  too  well  known  to  the 
police,  they  are  too  far  from  the  magic  telephone  re- 
ceivers, without  which  it  is  useless  to  think  of  rousing 
Paris,  to  dream  of  any  serious  attempt,  and  it  is  prob- 
able that  the  hand-book  in  which  two  of  them  have 
described  how  the  coup  de  force  ought  to  be  carried 
out  will  remain  their  nearest  approach  to  action.' 
They  will  gradually  subside  into  the  delusion  I  men- 
tioned above,  in  which  people  are  sure  of  an  event 
coming  to  pass  because  it  ought  to  take  place,  and  con- 
fuse possibility  with  probability.  This  mental  disposi- 
tion helps  men  to  wait  for  years  without  dying  of 
impatience,  and  moreover  it  is  no  inconsiderable  factor 
in  the  formation  of  opinion. 

Prince  Victor  Napoleon  stands  much  better  chances. 
It  is  true  that  his  poHtical  doctrine  is  inferior  in  con- 
sistency and  cogency  to  that  of  the  other  Pretender — 
the  plebiscite  or  referendum  on  which  it  is  built  is  a 
terrible  element  of  weakness  in  a  constitution — but  in  a 
time  when  the  universal  desire  tends  towards  a  man, 
the  doctrine  itself  matters  little;  controversy  over  it 

'  Le  Coup  de  Force,  est  il  possible?  by  C.  Maurras  and  Dutrait  Crozon. 


360  The  Political  Problems 

would  only  begin  long  after  its  representative  had  been 
at  the  head  of  affairs.  Now,  Prince  Napoleon  enjoys 
the  advantage  of  the  immense  popularity  which  litera- 
ture and  art  have  gained  and  will  long  maintain,  if  not 
for  himself  at  least  for  his  name;  the  criticisms  of  the 
mistakes  made  by  Napoleon  the  Third,  which  I  pointed 
out  in  the  first  part  of  this  book,  are  hardly  known 
outside  a  small  circle  of  specialists,  and  those  mistakes 
were  the  errors  of  an  individual  rather  than  of  a  regime; 
above  all,  his  personal  situation  is  superior  to  that  of  his 
rival.  A  happier  marriage,  with  children  and  an  im- 
mense fortune,  is  no  mean  asset,  but  this  is  only  one 
detail.  The  chief  superiority  of  Prince  Victor  lies  in 
the  fact  that  while  the  Duke  of  Orleans  has  no  friends 
in  active  political  circles,  his  rival  is  in  touch  with 
influential  men  very  near  the  centre  of  affairs,  and  with 
financiers  who  may  be  even  more  influential.  The 
facility  with  which  a  Radical  can  become  an  Imperialist, 
and  vice  versa,  is  an  historical  law  which  is  not  likely 
to  be  contradicted  in  the  near  future.  Against  these 
apparently  overwhelming  chances  is  the  improbability 
of  three  Bonapartes  forcibly  securing  power  in  little 
more  than  a  century,  the  comparatively  advanced  age 
of  Prince  Victor,  and  the  passivity  which  his  frequent 
allusions  to  the  plebiscitarian  doctrine  almost  inevitably 
engender.  One  may  safely  prophesy  that  if  a  movement 
of  public  opinion  should  call  Prince  Victor  back  from 
his  exile,  he  would  promptly  be  in  a  position  to  make 
the  coup  d'etat,  but  it  is  because  in  that  case  the  coup 
d'etat  would  be  merely  a  sort  of  formality. 

The  only  person  who  could  do  with  the  greatest  ease 
what  the  others  could  do  only  with  tremendous  dif- 
ficulty is  President  Poincare.  Even  after  missing 
several  opportunities  (especially  at  the  time  of  the  fall 


A  Change  of  Regime  361 

of  M.  Barthou)  any  bold  initiative  on  his  part  would  be 
welcome — a  message  to  the  Chamber  in  the  manly  tone 
of  that  of  President  Woodrow  Wilson  on  the  Panama 
Canal  would  produce  as  much  impression  as  a  dissolu- 
tion. As  to  the  energetic  operation  which  I  described 
above,  with  the  suspension  of  the  Parliamentary  session 
for  a  brief  period,  and  the  imprisonment  of  a  dozen 
people,  anybody  with  eyes  to  see  must  realize  that  it 
could  be  done  with  the  concurrence  of  just  three  people : 
the  Minister  of  the  Interior,  the  Minister  of  War,  and 
the  Prefect  of  Police ;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  name  the 
men  who  ought  to  hold  these  posts  to  make  the  opera- 
tion wonderfully  easy,  in  the  general  inertness  of  the 
lookers-on  and  the  perfect  isolation  of  the  Radicals  and 
Socialists  who  alone  might  wish  to  oppose  it. 

But  the  President  will  not  do  this.  He  has  settled 
down  too  rapidly  into  the  perfect  constitutional  atti- 
tude, ^  and  perhaps  his  political  training  has  made  him 
more  like  his  own  enemies  than  the  atmosphere  in  which 
he  was  elected  allows  us,  the  public,  to  realize. 

Yet  the  possibility  of  a  Republican  coup  d'etat  with 
the  establishment  of  some  regime  recalling  the  Directory 
still  remains.  M.  Poincare  would  be  in  this  combina- 
tion, naturally,  but  not  as  the  principal  actor,  and  the 
plot  being  little  more  than  a  lobby  intrigue  would  not 
appear  formidable  to  the  protagonists.  Perhaps,  the 
responsibility  being  shared  among  several,  and  the  risks 
appearing  inconsiderable,  an  opportunity  will  be  enough 
to  nerve  the  possible  directors  to  decision.  Whatever 
might  be  the  results — probably  ephemeral,  but  in  the 
right  direction — of  their  action,  the  resistance  they  would 
meet  would  come  only  from  rival  ambitions,  and  the 
country  would  witness  the  change  with  perfect  serenity. 

»  Vide  his  address  at  Lyons  on  May  24,  191 4. 


362  The  Political  Problems 

What  I  have  said  so  far  sounds  rather  paradoxical; 
circumstances  are  such  that  they  invite  the  resolute 
interference  of  a  strong  man,  but  the  conditions  in 
which  the  likeliest  persons  find  themselves  seem  to 
preclude  any  probability  of  their  making  up  their 
minds  to  interfere;  a  coup  d'etat  never  appeared  more 
advisable,  but  what  is  the  good  or  even  the  interest  if 
everything  indicates  that  it  will  not  take  place? 

I  disclaimed  from  the  first  any  intention  of  doing 
more  than  to  point  out  definite  symptoms  in  the  public 
mind,  or  in  its  chief  representatives,  and  draw  there- 
from the  most  cautious  inferences.  Now  the  fact  sub- 
sists that  in  spite  of  everything  discouraging  the  hope 
that  a  strong  man  will  appear  to  redress  glaring  de- 
ficiencies, the  hope  of  seeing  order  restored  in  France 
through  a  strengthened  authority  does  not  perish. 
Such  a  feeling,  conscious  as  it  appears  in  numberless 
articles,  and  in  that  highly  enlightening  volume,  Faites 
un  Roiy  Sinon  Faites  la  paiXj  by  the  Socialist  Sembat,  is 
eminently  one  of  those  motive  ideas  which  Fouillee 
called  idees-forces.  An  aspiration  of  this  intensity 
directed  towards  a  Restoration  would  inevitably  bring 
the  King  back,  if  circumstances  were  more  favourable ; 
directed  towards  the  return  to  authority,  when  the 
opposition  to  it  is  merely  the  selfishness  and  jejune  talk 
of  a  few  himdred  politicians,  it  must  produce  some 
effect. 

What  the  effect  would  be  might  remain  doubtful  if 
it  were  indefinite  in  the  minds  of  those  who  work  for  its 
realization.  But  this  is  not  the  case.  By  dint  of  feeling 
and  deploring  deficiencies,  the  remedies  have  gradually 
been  found,  and  for  the  last  five  or  six  years  they  have 
been  made  the  basis  of  an  extensive  political  agitation. 
M.  Charles  Benoist,  one  of  the  best-known  popularizers 


A  Change  of  Regime  363 

of  political  science  in  France,  circulated  these  general 
ideas  through  the  whole  country  during  the  election  of 
1914,  but  they  had  long  been  common  property,  and 
they  are  a  familiar  topic  in  far-away  village  inns.  What 
M.  Sembat  calls  the  "top-gap" — le  trou  par  en  haul — 
would  be  sufficiently  filled  in  if  the  President  of  the 
Republic,  instead  of  being  a  "hat  and  not  a  head," 
should  be  given  at  least  the  authority  and  range  of 
action  of  a  Prime  Minister — in  fact,  if  he  became  the 
daily  heard  leader  that  Thiers  was  in  the  early  years 
of  the  Republic ;  if  the  Cabinet  Ministers  were  chosen 
outside  Parliament,  or  if  at  any  rate  they  had  to  give 
up  their  Parliamentary  position,  as  in  England,  before 
taking  office;  if  Proportional  Representation  were  sub- 
stituted for  the  present  electioneering  system;  and  if 
some  sort  of  decentralization  could  counteract  the  enor- 
mous bureaucratic  congestion  bequeathed  to  France  by 
Napoleon  the  First.  That  these  simple  reforms  would 
immediately  transform  the  political  outlook  is  univer- 
sally realized,  even  by  the  handful  who  would  be  losers 
in  it;  and,  if  they  were  actually  brought  about,  the 
sensation  that  an  authority  at  last  existed  in  France 
would  at  once  be  felt. 

Now  the  consciousness  that  between  this  relief  and 
its  easy  means  there  is  only  the  weakness  of  the  Cham- 
ber, has  grown  to  a  degree  in  which  it  appears  im- 
possible that  the  Chamber,  blind  and  lame  as  its  origins 
make  it,  should  not  realize  it  as  well,  and  the  Revision 
of  the  Constitution  seems  inevitable. 

How  this  will  be  done  is  a  minor  detail.  Perhaps  the 
Proportional  Representation  Bill  will  be  passed  first, 
and,  its  moralizing  influence  being  certain,  it  may 
gradually  drag  the  rest  in  its  train.  Perhaps  things  will 
happen  very  differently.    It  is  not  impossible — nay,  it 


364  The  Political  Problems 

is  much  more  in  keeping  with  the  French  aptitude  for 
sudden  impulses  and  wide-reaching  efforts  after  long 
periods  of  indolence — that  they  should  suddenly  make 
up  their  minds  to  rebuild  the  whole  Constitution  and 
revise  it  in  every  detail.  The  national  inclination  for 
vast  systems  would  give  itself  free  play  in  the  effort, 
and  nobody  will  doubt  that  the  same  genius  which  in  a 
few  years'  time  produced  the  Code  Civil,  would  in  a  few 
months  produce  a  tolerable  system  of  constitutional 
laws.  A  new  Assemblee  Constituante  with  the  memo- 
ries of  the  errors  of  the  first  as  a  lesson,  and  the  for- 
midable teaching  of  contemporary  European  politics 
to  enlighten  it,  might  find  in  wisdom  the  same  pleasure 
that  the  Utopians  of  1848  took  in  generosity.  We  have 
every  reason  to  mistrust  assemblies,  but  there  are 
motives  at  the  present  day  for  thinking  that  an  assem- 
bly could  not  but  be  influenced  by  the  great  wave  of 
practical  good  sense  beating  outside  it. 

Who  knows?  It  is  not  impossible  that  such  a  Con- 
stituante might  resume  the  work  of  the  first  at  the 
precise  point  where  it  diverged  from  the  tradition  of 
France,  and  instead  of  a  Democracy — improved  it  is 
true,  but  still  bearing  in  itself  the  elements  of  instability 
inherent  in  democracies — should  give  us  a  stronger 
constitution.  It  may  look  Hke  a  dream,  but  the  first 
Napoleon  was  an  impossible  dream  in  1798,  and  the 
second  was  hardly  less  of  one  even  in  1848. 

Yet,  let  us  not  be  carried  away  too  far  by  the  logic 
of  events.  The  only  certainty  that  seems  to  deserve 
this  name  is  the  certainty  of  a  strengthening  of  au- 
thority. The  mode  of  this  strengthening  will  be  de- 
termined by  circumstances,  as  its  time  may  be  put 
back  by  the  hope  of  peace  or  advanced  by  inter- 
national   difficulties,    but   everything   points    to    the 


The  Democratic  Progress  365 

disappearance  of  the  legal   anarchy   known    as    the 
Constitution  of  1875. 

3.    Inevitability  of  the  Democratic  Progress 

Ought  we  to  look  further  than  the  immediate  proba- 
bilities and  ask  ourselves  what  the  tantalizing  future 
may  be?  Why  not?  The  anticipation  of  things  to  come 
appears  frequently  to  be  as  illuminating  as  the  lesson 
of  history  itself. 

Now,  if  it  seems  certain  that  the  gradual  return  of 
France  to  her  traditional  habits  of  mind,  along  with  the 
political  necessities  she  has  to  face,  must  sooner  or  later 
bring  her  back  to  a  regime  in  which  the  multitude  will 
no  longer  be  ruler,  it  seems  no  less  certain  that  the  rise 
of  the  lower  classes  cannot  and  will  not  be  impeded. 
The  word  Democracy  means  two  very  different  things: 
it  means,  first  of  all,  the  absurdity  which  place's  sov-    i 
ereignty  in  nimibers  and  entrusts  the  responsibility  of  / 
the  common  welfare  to  those  who  are  the  least  able  to  i 
bear  it,  but  it  means  also  the  extension  of  better  ma-    1 
terial  conditions  and  of  a  higher  intellectual  and  moral 
culture  to  those  who  so  far  have  not  had  the  benefit  of 
them. 

Now  the  history  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  Europe 
and  America  leaves  no  doubt  that  what  interests 
modem  minds  the  most  in  the  development  of  nations 
is  this  kind  of  democracy.  When  we  look  back  upon 
the  history  of  France  or  England — ^in  which  merely 
political  elements  have  played  less  part  than  in  the  , 
history  of  Germany  or  Italy — we  are  immediately  f 
conscious  that,  compared  with  it,  all  the  rest — evolu- 
tion of  parties,  succession  of  governments,  etc. — shrinks 
into  insignificance.    Such  a  test  cannot  deceive  us. 


366  The  Political  Problems 

It  is  a  fact  that  the  millions,  which  before  the  ex- 
pansion of  industrialism  and  the  enormous  enlargement 
of  armies  were  practically  part  of  the  soil,  and  hardly 
distinguished  from  the  agricultural  map  of  countries, 
have  acquired,  owing  to  this  double  organization,  a 
consciousness  of  the  part  they  play  which  makes  them 
completely  new  factors  in  the  history  of  nations.  To- 
day, the  most  obscure  workman  in  an  out-of-the-way 
factory  knows  that  some  of  his  country's  security  and 
some  of  its  productivity  rests  upon  him,  and  the  exer- 
cise he  is  taught  to  make  of  the  right  of  association 
magnifies  a  hundredfold  for  him  the  consciousness  he 
may  have  of  his  importance.  The  political  organiza- 
tion of  the  various  countries  in  which  this  element  is 
found  has  little  to  say  to  it.  It  is  the  same  in  England 
in  spite  of  long  traditions,  in  Belgium  in  spite  of  un- 
heard-of prosperity,  in  Germany  in  spite  of  the  iron 
rod,  in  Japan  in  spite  of  recent  victory  and  intoxicating 
rise,  and  in  the  United  States  itself  in  spite  of  the 
delusive  optimism  in  which  its  workers  live.  The 
governments  may  be  strong  or  weak,  they  may  object 
to  this  movement  or  endeavour  to  guide  it,  the  move- 
ment is  there  all  the  same  and  will  not  be  ignored. 

It  is  a  pity  that  the  theorist  of  the  best-known  system 
of  a  political  Restoration  in  France,  M.  Maurras,  should 
have  given  a  purely  literary  solution  to  a  problem  which 
he  could  not  leave  out,  but  which  evidently  he  disliked 
considering  in  its  concrete  significance.  This  may  be 
partly  the  cause  of  some  of  the  antipathy  which  yet 
subsists  in  many  milieus  against  the  Monarchy,  al- 
though no  essential  antagonism  can  be  pointed  out 
between  such  a  form  of  government  and  the  democratic 
development. 

M.  Maurras  is  not  only  a  Monarchist,  but  a  resolute 


The  Democratic  Progress  367 

oligarchist,  and  the  consequence  of  this  last  tendency 
is  the  return  to  nothing  less  than  a  caste  organization. 
I  have  already  given  the  main  line  of  what  is  Integral 
Nationalism,  and  a  brief  criticism  of  its  exaggeration 
will  be  sufficient  here. 

M.  Maurras  and  his  friends  are  almost  all  converted 
sceptics  whose  conversion  has  been  brought  about  by 
the  sight  of  the  decadence  of  their  country,  and  who 
have  rebuilt  their  creed  upon  patriotism.  They  have 
seen  that  the  most  frequent  consequence  of  a  metaphy- 
sical culture  is  the  superb  indifference  of  Renan  in  his 
early  period  to  patriotic  contingencies,  and  their  soul 
rebels  against  it.  The  true  basis  on  which  a  man  ought 
to  seat  his  life  is  the  sacred  soil  of  his  country,  and 
whatsoever  will  not  agree  with  patriotism  must  be 
regarded  as  immediately  false.  Now  it  appears  clearly 
that  Democratism  and  all  the  sentimental  progress 
dreamed  of  since  the  Revolution  are  dangerous,  be- 
cause they  are  the  offspring  of  emotion  and  imagination 
instead  of  reason,  and  invariably  stand  in  the  way  of  a 
nation's  greatness.  Therefore  let  them  be  discarded, 
and  let  something  more  substantial  be  substituted  for 
them.  What  this  something  should  be  is  not  difficult  to 
find  out.  Experience  proves  that  the  strongest  society 
which  history  has  known  so  far  is  the  Catholic  Church. 
Let  us  then  copy  its  constitution.  But  some  people 
who — like  M.  Maurras  himself,  and  in  his  own  words — 
''feel  uncomfortable  so  long  as  the  notion  of  a  Deity  is 
forced  upon  them,"  will  object  to  a  civil  ideal  being 
derived  from  a  religious  society ;  what  can  be  suggested 
to  them?  Here  again  the  answer  is  easy:  The  Catholic 
Church  has  had  a  model  in  the  Roman  Empire,  and 
whoever  meditates  on  the  organization  of  the  Roman 
Empire  will  see  that  real  civic  stability  lay  there  be- 


368      ,         The  Political  Problems 

cause  the  reason  of  the  best  few  imposed  its  will  upon 
the  va^ries  of  the  many. 

Here  M.  Maurras  appears  in  perfect  agreement  with 
Renan  in  La  Reforme  Intellectuelle  de  la  France;  in  the 
works  of  both  men  we  see  the  necessity  of  a  special  class 
to  think  for  the  rest  and  govern  them  according  to 
reason. 

But  the  question  cannot  be  entirely  left  out :  What  is 
the  rdle  of  the  lower  classes,  and  what  share  in  the 
patriotic  development  will  be  given  to  them?  It  would 
be  difficult  for  a  modern  man,  no  matter  how  remote 
from  Christianity,  to  be  satisfied  with  the  pagan  views 
about  the  poor,  and  difficult  above  all  to  state  them 
openly.  The  theorists  of  Nationalism  have  cast  about 
for  a  solution  and  found  one,  for  which,  however,  they 
have  to  thank  M.  Barres  more  than  their  own  ingenuity. 
The  lower  classes  are  not  capable  of  thought,  but  they 
are  capable  of  emotion,  and  if  their  children  are  brought 
up  in  the  best  traditions  of  the  nation,  if  their  artisans 
are  also  kept  within  the  tradition  of  their  trade,  their 
emotions  will  be  in  the  right  direction,  and  may  serve 
as  a  sentimental  reserve  in  which  the  intellect  of  their 
betters  will  have  its  roots.  In  that  way  there  will  be 
unity  and  harmony,  order  and  a  hierarchy. 

I  said  above  that  this  solution  was  merely  literary. 
In  fact,  it  only  looks  well  on  paper  but  will  not  stand  a 
practical  investigation,  as  is  the  case  with  most  of  the 
theories  of  the  same  school.  These  philosophers  detest 
sentimental  dreams,  but  they  enjoy  intellectual  air- 
castles.  If  the  whole  world  were  moving  towards  the 
ideal  they  propose,  it  might  be  possible,  by  dint  of 
eloquence  and  persuasion,  to  give  satisfaction  to  the 
working  classes  with  the  noble  though  modest  r61e 
assigned  to  them.    But  exceptions  would  be  dangerous, 


The  Democratic  Progress  369 

and  the  germs  of  rebellion  would  inevitably  come  from 
them  even  into  the  best-guarded  monarchies.  Now, 
far  from  there  being  a  move  towards  a  separation  of 
classes  and  a  return  to  castes,  it  is  too  evident  that  we 
see  the  reverse.  In  spite  of  the  daily  effort  made  by  M. 
Maurras  to  convince  us  that,  in  Germany  for  instance, 
the  public  spirit  as  well  as  uncompromising  govern- 
ments never  let  the  Socialist  theories  interfere  with  the 
practical  welfare  of  the  country,  it  is  certain  that 
there,  as  elsewhere,  the  millions  all  tend  towards  an 
economical  independence  which  will  raise  them  above 
their  present  station.  This  in  itself  has  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  Socialism  or  even  Democratism.  A  man  is  no 
Socialist  because  he  wants  to  be  better  off.  Yet  in  the 
long  run  the  economic  evolution  of  the  lower  classes 
must  result  in  political  changes.  With  independence 
culture  also  will  come,  and  with  this  the  consciousness 
of  the  new  right  to  have  a  word  to  say  in  one's  country's 
affairs.  Underneath  the  universal  straining  of  the  lower 
classes  after  better  material  circumstances  lies  their 
longing  to  be  something  more  than  a  sentimental 
reserve. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  if  the  dogma  of  Christian 
fraternity  is  not,  on  any  account,  to  be  made  convertible 
into  the  chimera  of  equality,  and  cannot  therefore  be 
regarded  as  synonymous  with  any  levelling  notion,  it  is, 
on  the  contrary,  easily  reconcilable  with  the  idea  of  a 
moral  and  intellectual  bettering  which  the  classes  at 
present  termed  higher  ought  to  promote  in  every  possi- 
ble way;  the  two  great  forces  at  work  in  the  world, 
faith  and  material  progress,  meet  at  this  point. 

As  a  conclusion,  it  seems  difficult  to  resist  the  prob- 
ability that  the  rise  of  the  working-classes  will  go  on  in 
spite  of  the  dangers  caused  by  some  of  its  revolutionary 


370  The  Political  Problems 

aspects.  And  it  is  possible  that  some  day  civilizations 
may  exist  on  this  globe  in  which  the  idea  of  social 
inequalities  will  be  practically  done  away  with,  but 
which  may  not  have  lost  the  territorial  feeling.  Such 
communities  might  be  as  hostile  to  one  another  as 
Sparta  was  to  Athens.  But  this  is  not  an  immediate 
probability.  Present  symptoms,  on  the  contrary,  point 
to  a  victory  of  the  class  conception  over  the  old  terri- 
torial idea;  and  if,  as  may  be  expected,  the  gradual 
progress  of  Syndicalism  eliminates  finance  with  its 
greed  and  militarism  with  its  violence  from  the 
dangerous  points  at  which  wars  have  been  so  far  pro- 
duced, long  periods  of  peace  can  easily  be  imagined. 

The  consequence  is  plain.  If  this  should  be  the  case, 
the  globe  would  witness  a  universal  establishment  of 
what  in  default  of  another  word  we  may  call  humanita- 
rian principles,  and  with  their  extension  the  old  form 
of  patriotism  associated  with  territories  and  frontiers 
would  become  more  and  more  philosophical,  milder 
and  more  poetic,  imtil  it  would  appear  to  have  been 
in  its  present  notion  crude  and  uncivilized. 

4.    A  Moral  Solution  to  the  Political  Problem 

If  patriotism,  as  we  at  present  conceive  it,  is  thus 
doomed  to  disappear  in  the  contempt  of  the  wise,  is  it 
very  necessary  that  we  should  trouble  ourselves  so 
much  about  its  immediate  destinies,  and  that  in  order 
to  save  a  sort  of  intellectual  category  we  should  steel 
ourselves  against  our  neighbours,  look  upon  their 
progress  as  our  ruin,  and  go  back  to  barbarism  when 
everything  about  us  is  becoming  gentler? 

This  is  the  objection  that  will  often  present  itself 
to  the  modem  mind  morbidly  anxious  over  its  every 


A  Moral  Solution  371 

thought  and  impulse,  everlastingly  fearful  of  wasting 
any  chance  of  immediate  advantage,  and  trying  in 
everything  to  see  the  consequence  of  all  its  actions  into 
eternity.  Many  a  good  man  has  been  enervated  by  this 
kind  of  philosophy,  the  first  effect  of  which  is  to  throw 
all  that  we  think  and  do  out  of  the  human  scale  by 
isolating  it  in  the  solitude  of  ages  to  come. 

We  have  reasons  to  fear  that  people  open  to  this  kind 
of  reasoning  would  not  reject  another  line  of  argument 
which,  however,  is  a  great  deal  more  shocking.  If  the 
idea  of  possible  peace  between  our  nation  and  its 
neighbours  in  the  far-away  future  is  enough  to  annihi- 
late the  energy  of  these  long-sighted  men,  the  certitude 
of  changes  to  take  place  much  sooner  ought  unfortu- 
nately to  be  enough  to  produce  the  same  effect.  The 
vision  of  universal  peace  is  not  a  discovery  of  modem 
philosophers,  and  since  it  has  been  in  the  dreams  of 
poets,  many  nations  have  risen,  been  transformed,  and 
finally  have  melted  away  like  snow  into  the  earth.  Why 
should  we  take  such  pains  over  the  preservation  of 
accidents  without  a  substance?  It  is  a  folly  to  give 
much  attention  to  mere  geographical  outlines  or  even  to 
racial  characteristics  which  slowly  but  inevitably  wear 
away.  The  map  of  France  has  been  as  changing  as  if  it 
were  designed  on  water.  In  the  last  hundred  years  or  so 
the  artificial  importance  attached  by  the  Romanticists 
to  languages  and  to  racial  bonds  has  seemed  to  confer 
more  solidity  on  wide  family  groupings,  but  even  this  is 
a  delusion  as  much  as  a  novelty.  The  Middle  Ages 
thought  no  more  of  languages  than  of  frontiers,  and  if 
there  were  abuses  in  those  times  they  certainly  were 
not  caused  by  this  indifference  to  geography.  In  spite 
of  all  that  we  may  do,  one  millennium  or  two  will  make 
the  French  language  as  different  from  itself  as  it  is  at 


372  The  Political  Problems 

present  from  Latin,  and  the  inhabitants  of  the  Seine 
and  Loire  valleys  will  be  as  uncertain  of  their  French 
descent  as  we  are  to-day  of  our  Prankish  or  Gaul 
origins.  Why  not  be  resigned  to  that  which  is  not  only 
inevitable  in  the  future,  but  is  in  the  making  at  the 
very  moment  we  speak? 

It  is  needless  to  enter  into  a  controversy  on  these 
subjects.  Universal  peace  will  be  doubtful  so  long  as 
there  are  men  with  wants  and  passions  and  a  desire  to 
get  as  much  as  possible  by  giving  as  little  as  they  can, 
but  the  mutability  of  geographical  contingencies  is  a 
fact  and  all  that  is  said  about  it  is  irrefutable.  But 
something  else  is  irrefutable  because  it  can  be  deduced 
from  the  same  premises,  that  is  the  vital  distinction 
between  the  intellectual  and  the  emotional  order,  and 
the  superiority  of  the  former  as  a  factor  of  true 
happiness  in  man's  life. 

Political  events  mean  nothing  in  themselves;  com- 
mercial agreements  after  long  diplomatic  controversies, 
remodellings  of  frontiers  in  an  unvisited  colony,  ex- 
changes of  influence,  substitutions  of  protectorates,  etc. 
— all  these  have  no  more  significance  than  mere  changes 
of  Government,  and  many  a  man  has  led  a  good  and 
full  life  without  taking  any  notice  of  them.  But  there 
are  times  when  everybody  feels  compelled  to  give  his 
attention  to  these  apparently  indifferent  affairs.  Then 
the  situation  changes  at  once;  we  have  to  adopt  an 
attitude,  and  according  to  the  side  we  choose  we  find 
that  our  self-esteem  rises  or  decreases.  It  is  the  case 
whenever  our  freewill  and  no  longer  our  intellect  is  the 
arbitrator;  we  are  placed  before  the  alternative  of 
acting  like  men  or  feeling  like  cowards,  and  the  con- 
tingencies which  have  brought  about  this  alternative 
soon  recede  into  the  background  and  vanish. 


A  Moral  Solution  373 

So  we  know  nothing  about  the  future  except  that 
the  ethical  Hfe  of  man  in  ten  thousand  years  will  be 
subject  to  the  same  laws  as  to-day.  The  notion  of 
fraternity  may  have  prevailed  then  in  such  a  manner 
that  civilizations  will  not  only  appear  more  perfect 
than  at  present,  but  may  even  call  forth  the  best 
tendencies  in  every  man,  yet  this  is  not  certain.  It  may, 
on  the  contrary,  have  degenerated  into  some  sort  of 
Buddhism  in  which  a  feminine  gentleness  would  replace 
more  virile  virtues,  and  then  where  would  be  the  profit? 

Whatever  may  happen  when  our  short  lives  have  long 
bubbled  out,  a  problem  lies  before  us  about  which  we 
have  to  make  up  our  minds  at  once.  Two  tendencies 
offer  themselves  to  us  which  it  was  for  years  difficult  to 
characterize,  and  which  only  the  clearer-sighted  could 
define  satisfactorily  to  themselves,  but  which  the  flash 
of  lightning  of  1905  suddenly  made  perfectly  plain- 
On  one  side  we  see  the  Socialist  philosophy  which  might 
have  been  very  different  from  what  it  is,  but  which ^ 
having  gone  to  Materialism  for  its  metaphysics,  paid 
the  penalty  of  such  a  mistake  by  being — ^not  in  the  acts 
of  the  workers,  but  in  the  speeches  of  its  theorists — low, 
cynical,  and  ill-bred — ^in  a  word,  the  philosophy  of 
the  belly.  On  the  other  side  is  the  simple,  patriotic 
feeling,  with  no  philosophy  at  its  back,  but  a  great 
moral  radiance  which  would  not  be  there  imless  it  had 
reason  on  its  side.  Patriotism  does  not  bother  about 
metaphysical  rights  and  wrongs,  it  cares  nothing  for 
philosophy,  and  cares  only  for  that  much  of  history 
which  it  carries  in  itself.  It  does  not  take  the  trouble 
either  to  scan  scientifically  the  causes  of  the  situation 
before  which  it  is  placed;  it  hears  a  great  deal  that 
seems  probable  enough  and  disgusting  enough  about 
the  responsibility  of  bankers  and  great  money-makers 


374  The  Political  Problems 

in  wars;  it  even  realizes  that  the  ambition  of  a  Napoleon 
or  that  of  a  Bismarck  are  not  altogether  pure,  but  at  no 
time  is  this  sufficient  to  damp  its  energy,  and  when,  as 
is  the  case  in  France  at  the  present  moment,  every- 
thing tends  to  simplify  the  alternative  in  which  it  finds 
itself,  nothing  obscures  its  vision.  Its  choice  is  between 
the  lazy  or  cynical  forgetfulness  of  the  events  which  in 
1870  detached  more  than  a  million  Frenchmen  from 
France  and  forced  an  unprecedented  humiliation  upon 
her,  between  the  not  very  remote  danger  of  another 
invasion  with  its  shameful  or  horrible  consequences, 
and  the  acceptance  of  the  baptism  of  blood  which  the 
Tangier  demonstration  made  an  immediate  possibility 
in  1905  and  the  Agadir  affair  transformed  into  an  all- 
powerful  attraction  in  191 1.  Philosophy,  evolution, 
words  of  all  kinds,  fraternity  in  disguise,  the  watch- 
words of  parties,  the  hypocritical  ranting  of  politicians, 
all  this  vanishes  before  the  prospect  of  losing  that  which 
Socialism  calls  vain  geographical  appearances,  but 
which  a  man  worthy  of  the  name  regards  as  the  condi- 
tion of  his  most  valued  life  and  of  his  self-esteem.  The 
future  will  be  what  it  may,  but  the  present  is  not  am- 
biguous, and  if  it  had  been  less  perspicuous  this  book 
could  not  have  been  written.  After  a  century  of  play- 
ing with  ideas  and  mistaking  words  for  things,  the 
French  have  turned  their  forces  towards  the  fields 
in  which  men  meet  men,  actions  count  for  speeches,  and 
courage  is  the  highest  philosophy;  if  the  nation  could 
have  at  present  the  chiefs — let  alone  useless  representa- 
tives— who  would  really  feel  as  it  does,  there  would  be 
no  doubt  left  that  since  1905  an  era  has  been  closed  and 
another  has  dawned  which  will  see  a  simplification  of 
men's  ideas  and  a  strengthening  of  their  feelings. 
Indeed,  under  the  patriotic  impulse  which  I  have 


A  Moral  Solution  375 

followed  in  its  manifestations,  there  is  more  than  one 
reaction.  There  is  not  only  the  weariness  of  scepticism, 
the  longing  after  clear  principles  on  which  to  base  one's 
life  even  at  the  cost  of  the  long-valued  right  to  exercise 
free  thought  in  every  domain,  but  there  is  also  another 
kind  of  lassitude.  I  referred  at  the  beginning  of  this 
chapter  to  one  great  modern  characteristic  which  is 
an  everlasting  consciousness  of  comfort  or  discomfort — 
moral  as  well  as  physical — in  their  minutest  percep- 
tibility, a  careful  doling  out  of  our  efforts,  as  if  all  our 
soul  might  go  out  of  us  by  drops,  a  perpetual  anxiety 
not  to  be  imposed  upon  or  made  to  do  more  than  our 
share  which  spoils  married  lives  themselves  as  it  em- 
bitters the  intercourse  between  classes,  in  short  a 
general  stinginess  in  the  exercise  of  our  faculties  and  in 
the  use  of  our  existence.  Modern  men  all  seem  to  be 
neurotic  subjects  shut  up  in  their  houses  but  fearing 
visitors,  and  in  default  of  something  worse  to  tax  their 
nerves  resenting  the  ringing  of  a  bell  and  the  barking 
of  a  dog.  This,  in  the  long  run,  results  like  everything 
else  in  a  reaction.  That  exquisite  selfishness  sooner  or 
later  disgusts,  because  it  is  not  only  ashamed  of  itself, 
but  self -torturing  as  well.  Comparisons  are  made  be- 
tween this  disquietude — in  spite  of  so  much  self-seeking 
— ^and  the  peace  in  which  men  lived  when  they  gave 
more  freely  of  their  own.  Hence  a  yearning  after 
simplicity,  and  a  longing  to  be  detached  from  one's  self 
which  accompanies  even  the  most  enthusiastic  enco- 
mium of  progress.  Hence,  no  doubt,  many  of  the  traits 
of  individual  courage  which  France  has  witnessed  in 
the  past  few  years.  The  French  have  welcomed  with 
gratitude  the  opportunity  which  the  danger  of  their 
country  offered  to  them  to  know  the  rare  taste  of 
heroism  while  merely  doing  their  duty.    They  feel  that 


376  The  Political  Problems 

this  great  chance  of  breaking  away  from  egotism  may 
restore  them  to  the  simpUcity  of  less  sophisticated 
times  and  rid  them  of  the  sensation  of  surfeit. 

All  this  is  after  all  an  a  posteriori  proof  that  political 
problems  are  ultimately  reducible  to  moral  problems, 
as  in  fact  they  become  the  moment  they  are  presented 
in  the  concrete  to  each  individual.  Let  there  be  in 
a  nation  the  disposition  to  self-sacrifice  which  alone 
translates  outward  occurrences  into  the  terms  of  ethics, 
and  the  fluctuations  of  its  history  will  matter  little: 
success  will  not  weaken  nor  defeat  depress  it. 

But  the  difficulty  is  to  keep  up  such  a  disposition 
after  the  excitement  of  a  crisis  has  abated,  and  through 
long  historical  periods.  It  is  here  that  the  possibility  of 
creating  an  atmosphere,  a  moral  environment  from 
which  individuals  cannot  escape  should  be  considered. 
Given  such  an  atmosphere,  even  the  weak  become 
strengthened;  without  it,  many  naturally  strong  will 
waste  their  energies.  But  how  can  we  produce  this 
invigorating  milieu  in  which  even  Socialist  institutions, 
if  they  should  ever  be  realized,  would  not  be  more 
dangerous  for  the  temperament  of  mankind  than  the 
passage  of  Europe  from  feudalism  was  in  the  days  of  the 
Communist  movement?  Only  one  answer  seems  possi- 
ble; only  one  man  will  always  and  quite  naturally  raise 
all  questions  to  the  plane  of  morals,  high  above  petty 
interest;  this  is  not  the  philosopher,  it  is  the  believer, 
or  at  any  rate  the  philosopher  who  knows  where  belief 
must  begin. 

Nothing,  except  faith,  will  do  for  a  whole  existence, 
above  all  for  the  existence  of  a  nation,  what  roused 
patriotism  only  does  at  intervals.  The  energy  necessary 
for  the  building  up  of  an  Empire,  nay,  of  such  an 
apparently  trivial  affair  as  the  building  up  of  a  family 


A  Moral  Solution  377 

of  more  than  one  child,  will  not  be  given  to  a  whole 
nation  without  a  religious  support.  It  takes  the  sim- 
plicity, the  trust,  the  almost  unconscious  habit  of 
self-forgetfulness  of  the  Christian  to  stay  on  the  self- 
sacrificing  level  for  any  length  of  time.  The  everiast- 
ing  study  of  Frenchmen,  therefore,  ought  to  be,  in 
peace  as  well  as  in  troubled  times,  the  perfection  of 
their  race  and  faith  as  it  appeared  in  such  examples  as 
Saint  Louis  or  Jeanne  d*Arc.  With  this  admixture  of 
patriotic  pride  and  Christian  htimility,  of  true  love  and 
manly  dignity,  of  childlike  simplicity  and  common- 
sense  as  clear-sighted  as  shrewdness  itself,  history  may 
be  remodelled  many  times,  civilization  may  evolve 
indefinitely,  patriotism  may  assume  numberless  forms, 
but  the  individual  will  have  no  difficulty  in  reading  his 
duty  in  historical  circumstances.  On  the  whole,  politics 
will  always  be  made  subservient  to  morals,  and  morality 
is  precarious  without  its  eternal  support;  the  lesson  of 
this  book  is  the  recommendation  of  a  plain  and  virile 
Christianity. 


PART  IV 
CONCLUSION 


379 


CONCLUSION 

FRANCE  AND  THE  WAR  OF  I914 

The  general  import  of  this  volume  is  plain  enough; 
France  has  been  weakened  by  her  disasters  in  1870,  but 
the  losses  she  sustained  at  that  time  would  have  been 
made  good  easily,  had  it  not  been  for  the  intellectual 
deterioration  which  a  baneful  philosophy  and  a  lawless 
literature  produced.  The  true  weakening  of  France 
came  from  ideas  obscuring  her  reason  and  enervating 
her  moral  powers.  However,  a  country  noted  for 
lucidity  and  logic  cannot  be  a  prey  to  paradoxes  for  a 
longer  period  than  that  during  which  their  brilliance 
or  their  daring  aspect  deceive  as  to  their  essential 
harmfulness.  Let  any  circumstance  reveal  them  in  their 
true  character,  and  in  more  or  less  time  the  fascination 
they  create  will  be  replaced  by  disgust.  The  circum- 
stance with  men  of  the  intellectual  capacity  of  Taine 
and  Renan,  and  hundreds  of  kindred  intellects,  was  the 
war  of  1870  and  the  Commune  of  187 1;  it  completely 
changed  their  outlook,  and  showed  to  them  that  in 
times  like  our  own,  during  which  the  thought  of  the 
philosopher,  tentative  as  the  latter  may  think  it,  is  apt 
to  become  the  guiding  rule  of  the  millions,  it  is  impera- 
tive for  the  thinker  to  watch  carefully  the  effects  of  his 


382  Conclusion 

speculation  and  be  modest  in  its  expression.  This 
feeling,  along  with  the  development  of  doctrines  less 
narrowly  intellectual  than  those  in  favour  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  has  transformed 
the  tone  of  French  literature,  and  brought  it  back  to  a 
standpoint  very  similar  to  its  traditional  attitude. 

The  masses  were  sure  in  due  time  to  follow  the  lead 
thus  given  to  them,  but  owing  to  the  slow  pace  at  which 
ideas  travel  through  passive  minds  this  might  have 
taken  long  trains  of  years.  The  circimistance  which 
awakened  the  national  common-sense,  as  the  literary 
man's  responsibility  had  been  roused  beforehand,  was 
the  danger  of  France  which  appeared  after  the  Tangier 
affair  in  1905  and  the  Agadir  incident  in  191 1.  From 
that  moment  the  seeds  of  wisdom  and  energy,  which 
had  lain  dormant  while  the  multitudes  believed  in  the 
millennium  of  universal  peace  and  universal  prosperity, 
developed  with  the  rapidity  of  an  unhampered  natural 
growth,  to  the  delight  of  patriots  and  the  disappoint- 
ments of  the  enemies  of  France.  It  seemed  as  if, 
almost  suddenly,  the  body  of  the  French  nation  were 
recovering  its  long  lost  vigour  in  the  bracing  quality  of  a 
purer  and  clearer  atmosphere. 

Yet,  there  was  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  this  re- 
covery. While  the  country  craved  order,  morality, 
and  discipline  as  the  conditions  of  self-preservation,  a 
considerable  section  of  its  rulers — ^in  fact  the  majority 
in  the  Senate  and  a  strong  minority  in  the  Chamber — 
did  their  best  to  keep  up  the  lawlessness  and  the  general 
laxity,  thanks  to  which  they  have  been  able  during 
almost  forty  years  to  make  the  most  of  a  constitution 
unworthy  of  the  name  for  the  promotion  of  their  own 
selfish  interests. 

History  will  not  forget  that  in  191 3  the  Radicals 


France  and  the  War  of  191 4  383 

were  against  M.  Poincare,  whom  popular  feeling  re- 
garded as  the  representative  of  patriotism  against 
abdication  to  Germany,  and  that,  in  the  spring  of  19 14, 
on  the  eve  of  a  war  which  many  signs  portended  as 
imminent,  they  stood  for  a  reduction  of  the  military 
service  from  three  to  two  years,  a  colossal  crime  unless 
it  was  a  colossal  folly. 

Against  the  obstacle  arising  from  the  presence  of 
these  men  in  office,  there  was  the  hope  that  the  pressure 
of  opinion  would  be  sufficient  to  bring  about,  slowly  or 
forcibly,  through  persuasion  or  through  a  coup  d'etat,  a 
modification  of  the  constitutional  laws  limiting  the 
powers  of  the  Senate  and  Chamber,  and  giving  sufficient 
elbow-room  to  Government  to  make  its  name  something 
better  than  a  mockery  and  its  responsibility  a  reality 
rather  than  a  word. 

The  greatest  portion  of  this  volume  has  been  written 
in  view  of  this  situation.  Its  tone,  which  some  people 
will  think  alternately  optimistic  and  the  reverse,  does 
not  deserve,  I  will  venture  to  say,  such  epithets.  Optim- 
ism is  built  upon  wishes  rather  than  logic,  and  the 
hopefulness  prevalent  through  this  book  is  only  an  as- 
pect of  gratification  at  tangible  realities.  The  charge  of 
pessimism  is  hardly  better  founded ;  there  is  no  pessim- 
ism in  the  certainty  that  a  country  destitute  of  a 
better  guidance  than  that  of  an  irresponsible  assembly 
is,  in  spite  of  many  favourable  signs,  in  a  dangerous 
condition.  Yet,  I  must  confess  that  the  apparent 
success  of  the  Radicals  since  the  fall  of  M.  Barthou 
and  the  consequent  effacement  of  President  Poincar6 
were  not  likely  to  produce  hopefulness,  and  that  many 
a  passage  of  this  book  was  written  in  incertitude  and 
anxiety. 

Now  we  have  to  find  out  for  ourselves  to  what 


384  Conclusion 

extent  the  war  of  1914  has  justified  or  disproved  the 
main  views  expounded  in  the  foregoing  pages. 

Never  was  there  an  easier  task.  Never  was  light 
more  generously  and  evenly  spread  upon  the  great 
issues  before  which  only  in  July,  19 14,  we  still  stood  in 
uncertainty.  It  must  remain  as  the  experience  of  all 
those  who  lived  in  France  during  the  eventful  days  of 
the  mobilization  and  the  first  weeks  of  the  war  that 
all  that  had  seemed  complicated  beforehand  instanta- 
neously became  simplified,  and  as  all  the  elemental 
feelings  of  the  human  soul  were  finding  expression,  even 
on  sophisticated  lips,  with  the  naturalness  of  the  most 
ancient  literatures,  political  questions  suddenly  became 
clear  to  the  minds  even  of  the  peasant  and  the  child. 

The  real  epilogue  to  this  book  was  written  in  the 
facts  themselves  during  the  last  days  of  July  and  the 
first  days  of  August,  19 14.  One  week  saw  the  acquittal 
of  Madame  Caillaux  and  the  response  to  the  mobiliza- 
tion order,  and  showed  beyond  a  doubt  that  what  is  the 
main  certainty  running  through  these  four  hundred 
pages,  viz.,  that  if  France  was  the  victim  of  politicians 
her  own  heart  was  sound,  cannot  be  shaken  now.  Four 
days  after  the  sickening  exhibition  of  sentimental  de- 
cadence in  certain  Parisian  spheres,  and  of  the  loss  of 
honour  among  a  certain  section  of  the  French  magis- 
tracy, while  the  smell  of  decay  was  still  in  the  air,  the 
bells  calling  the  French  nation  to  arms  were  heard  in 
every  town  and  village,  and  in  one  moment  M.  Caillaux 
and  his  party  with  its  ambitions  and  corruptions  van- 
ished from  view  as  if  they  had  never  existed,  and  the 
country,  which  so  far  had  been  only  a  sort  of  abstraction 
perceived  through  literary  phenomena  or  emotional 
manifestations,  became  one  great  body  every  motion 
of  which  was  as  perceptible  as  a  familiar  gesture. 


France  and  the  War  of  191 4         385 

And  what  were  the  characteristics  of  this  true  France 
rid  at  last  of  her  political  excrescences?  Exactly  those 
which  hundreds  of  us  had  devotedly  hoped  would  be 
revealed  when  the  crisis  came  and  the  symptoms  of 
which  we  had  watched  through  years  of  patient  atten- 
tion. The  patriotism  of  the  French  was  as  pure  as  it 
had  been  during  the  Hundred  Years'  War  or  the  great 
Revolutionary  campaigns,  and  it  was  more  universal. 
Every  man  did  his  duty  and  every  woman  encouraged 
him  to  do  it  with  a  simplicity  which  did  not  suppress 
joy  but  subdued  enthusiasm;  there  was  no  hatred,  if 
there  was  a  degree  of  indignation,  in  its  manifestations; 
the  self -analysis  inevitable  with  the  French  even  when 
they  are  over-excited  showed  clearly  that  the  war  of 
1 9 14  was  not  an  occasion  of  revenge  and  redress,  as  it 
might  have  been,  for  the  wrongs  suffered  in  1870,  but 
exclusively  the  contest  of  civilization  with  overbearing 
barbarism;  England  was  regarded  in  this  struggle  as 
the  historical  representative  of  justice  and  kindliness, 
and  the  declaration  of  the  Czar  announcing  the 
resurrection  of  Poland,  which  a  few  months  before 
would  have  had  the  appearance  of  a  passage  from 
an  impossible  epic,  seemed  a  matter  of  course.  The 
whole  background  of  the  war  was  intellectual  and 
moral. 

With  such  an  environment  it  was  impossible  that 
the  courage  of  the  soldiers  and  even  of  the  non-com- 
batants should  be  much  affected  by  the  vicissitudes  of 
the  warfare.  The  present  writer  saw  the  French  Army 
retreating  from  Belgium  after  the  Battle  of  Charleroi, 
and  he  saw  Paris  on  the  eve  of  the  probable  siege  in  the 
last  days  of  August;  exhausted  and  battered  as  the 
soldiers  were  by  four  days'  continuous  fighting  they 
were  smiling  and  reassuring,  and  with  the  German 
35 


386  Conclusion 

aeroplanes  over  them,  the  Parisians,  women  as  well  as 
men,  showed  extraordinary  coolness. 

Another  feature  of  those  early  weeks  of  the  war  was 
the  evident  satisfaction  which  the  people  took  in  feeling 
themselves  for  the  first  time,  for  many  years,  really 
governed.  The  Chamber  and  Senate  had  disappeared; 
the  Cabinet  had  become  so  intimately  united  with  the 
military  authorities  that  the  War  Office  seemed  to  be 
the  only  seat  of  government;  meanwhile  the  communi- 
cations of  the  Ministers  as  well  as  those  of  the  Generals 
became  so  laconic  that  it  required  all  the  self-discipline 
latent  in  the  national  spirit  to  be  satisfied  with  them, 
yet  there  was  no  sign  of  impatience,  no  expression  of 
scepticism,  and  a  questioning  attitude  on  the  part  of 
M.  Clemenceau  was  reproved  as  an  attempt  at  dicta- 
torialness. 

So  in  these  weeks  during  which  all  her  vital  qualities 
were  one  after  the  other  tested,  France  proved  that  far 
from  being  in  decadence,  as  superficial  observers  had 
imagined  her,  she  was  capable  of  self-possession  resting 
on  the  clearest  understanding  of  a  situation,  of  endur- 
ing courage,  of  a  slowly  gathered  capacity  for  discipline, 
in  short,  of  all  the  manly  virtues  which,  since  her 
awakening  from  dreams  and  theories,  have  made  her  a 
nation  again  instead  of  the  home  of  millions  of  indi- 
viduals, each  one  apparently  engaged  in  the  pursuit 
of  his  own  ideal  or  pleasure.  In  this  much,  then,  the 
war  has  demonstrated  that  the  transformation  de- 
scribed in  this  volume  is  a  reality. 

The  consequences  in  the  near  future  are  obvious. 
Even  supposing  that  which  at  present  seems  unthink- 
able, that  is  to  say,  an  ultimate  success  of  Prussia  re- 
sulting as  in  1870  in  a  territorial  diminution  and  a  loss 
of  political  influence  for  France,   the  national  spirit 


France  and  the  War  of  1 914         387 

which  I  have  described,  helped  by  a  strong  government, 
would  even  under  such  unfavourable  conditions  make 
France  a  formidable  danger  for  her  enemies.  In  fact, 
the  danger  which  Bismarck  dreaded  for  years,  and 
which  he  only  ceased  to  fear  when  he  saw  the  Constitu- 
tion of  1875  firmly  established  and  productive  of  its 
worst  effects,  would  become  everlasting,  and  the  com- 
bination of  such  a  power  with  European  opinion  and 
the  resolve  of  England  and  Russia  would  be  sure  in  due 
time  to  restore  to  France  the  possessions  she  might  have 
lost. 

If,  as  is  more  probable,  the  European  equilibrium 
regain  its  stability,  it  appears  impossible  that  France 
should  make  an  unwise  use  of  her  renewed  influence. 
There  is  no  trace  of  imperialism  or  militarism  in  her 
attitude,  her  patriotism  is  free  from  all  taint  of  over- 
weening pride,  her  wish  for  expansion  is  conditioned 
by  that  of  her  neighbours  and  will  never  become  an 
overruling  impulse;  the  days  of  Napoleon  the  First 
with  his  greed  for  conquest  are  as  forgotten  as  those  of 
Napoleon  the  Third  with  his  taste  for  idle  speculation. 

But  whether  immediate  success  or  transient  failure 
must  be  the  conclusion  of  the  gigantic  struggle  which 
France  v/ith  her  Allies  entered  in  August,  19 14,  it 
remains  all-important  that  the  obstacle  which  through- 
out this  volume  has  been  pointed  out  as  being  in  the 
way  of  her  restoration — I  mean  the  danger  arising  from 
a  bad  government  or  a  bad  constitution,  should  be  per- 
manently removed.  I  have  repeated  several  times  in 
the  third  part  of  this  volume  that  the  sentimental  or 
emotional  impulse  of  a  nation,  however  irresistible 
it  may  appear  in  its  first  effects,  is  essentially  ephemeral. 
In  spite  of  her  transformation,  if  France  should  happen 
to  be  led  once  more,  after  the  peace  is  settled,  by  gov- 


388  Conclusion 

ernments  intimately  connected  with  a  party  looking 
for  its  success  in  disorder,  lack  of  continuity,  and  ulti- 
mately such  inferior  tendencies  as  envy,  greed,  abhor- 
rence of  effort  and  corresponding  indulgence,  what  had 
been  gained  by  years  of  slow  reclamation  would 
promptly  be  forfeited  once  more.  Peace  has  always 
been  a  more  difficult  trial  for  the  French  than  war,  and 
Radicalism  is  a  more  dangerous  enemy  for  their  na- 
tional qualities  than  German  miHtarism. 

So  the  real  conclusion  of  this  book  must  be  that  what 
France  needs  is  not  a  conversion  of  her  mind  and  soul 
which  is  at  present  an  indisputable  fact,  but  a  trans- 
formation of  her  regulating  system.  This  volume  has 
been  written  for  English  readers  with  a  desire  under- 
lying every  page  that  England  may  see  clearly  where 
are  the  true  interests  of  France,  because  they  are  her 
own  interests  and  after  all  the  interests  of  mankind  as 
well.  Each  nation  must  stand  for  an  ideal  for  which  it 
is  particularly  fitted.  The  ideal  of  England  is  to  feel 
kindly  and  to  govern  justly ;  the  ideal  of  France  is  to 
think  rightly  and  to  express  her  thoughts  with  the 
brilliance  which  seems  her  special  gift.  But  this  cannot 
be  done,  at  any  rate  cannot  be  done  with  the  spontane- 
ousness  characteristic  of  happy  periods,  under  poHtical 
conditions  making  deception  and  intrigue  a  necessity. 
France  cannot  be  representative  of  intellectual  truth 
and  of  the  order  which  invariably  attends  truth  with  a 
constitution  amounting  to  anarchy. 

The  hope  and  prayer  of  the  present  writer,  therefore, 
is  that  England  may  see  the  necessity  for  France  of 
stronger  institutions.  This  is  a  favourable  time  indeed 
for  a  remodelling  which  even  before  the  war  seemed  the 
only  way  open  to  the  universal  craving  after  stability. 
Wars  have  always  been  followed  by  efforts  at  improve- 


France  and  the  War  of  191 4         389 

ment  which  the  light  thrown  upon  every  object  by  the 
presence  of  danger  renders  easy  and  even  instinctive. 
All  that  is  needed  is  that  what  we  saw  in  the  days  im- 
mediately preceding  the  war,  that  is,  a  Parliament 
content  with  its  role  and  a  Government  equal  to  its 
responsibilities,  should  become  the  rule  and  no  longer 
be  the  rare  exception.  England  is  not  expected  to 
assume  a  part  which  her  national  temperament  abhors 
and  which  nobody  can  imagine  her  assuming;  there  is 
no  question  of  an  impossible  interference  in  the  affairs 
of  France ;  but  it  is  all-important  that  the  sane  opinions 
concerning  the  relations  of  the  legislative  and  the 
executive  powers  now  prevalent  in  the  French  Press 
should  be  known,  examined,  and  appreciated  in  Eng- 
land. It  is  not  amiss  that  the  passionate  attention  with 
which  Bismarck,  towards  1875,  followed  the  framing  by 
the  Assemblee  Nationale  of  constitutional  laws  which 
he  knew  would  work  for  him  better  than  ten  armies, 
should  be  the  attitude  of  the  friends  of  France  at  a 
time  when  the  same  laws  appear  at  last  in  their  true 
light  and  when  the  least  effort  may  replace  them  by 
reasonable  institutions.  The  interest  in  social  improve- 
ments natural  to  every  healthy  mind  is  no  interference, 
and  it  is  often  the  condition  of  progress. 

I  demand  nothing  more  from  the  readers  of  this 
book.  If  our  common  wish  be  fulfilled,  if  with  better 
institutions  France  be  given  the  leaders  she  deserves, 
the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  will  soon  appear 
as  one  of  the  great  turning-points  in  her  history.  With 
a  distinct  consciousness  of  the  difference  between  real 
progress  and  mere  dreams,  between  liberty  and  dema- 
gogism,  the  era  opened  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  by 
the  Encyclopaedists  will  be  closed,  and  another  opened. 
What  this  new  era  may  be  it  is  futile  to  predict,  but 


390  Conclusion 

of  one  thing  at  least  we  can  be  certain,  viz.,  that  the 
propagandism  natural  to  the  French  nation  will  be 
more  active  than  ever,  and  that  its  expression,  philo- 
sophic, political,  or  literary,  will  be  immeasurably 
superior  to  what  it  has  been  since  the  end  of  the  classical 
ages. 


INDEX 


About,  24,  32 

Academy,  the  French,  313,  333 

Acker,  P.,  321 

Adam,  Madame,  66 

Adam,  Paul,  315,  316 

Africa,  75,  79 

Agadir,  152  seq.,  204,  passim 

Algeria,  48,  76 

Alsace-Lorraine,  45,  50,  70    seq., 

76,  79,  80,  83,  134 
d'Amade,  General,  161,  352 
d'Annunzio,  236 
Amyot,  140 
Ancey,  226 
Andler,  135,  252 
Andr6,  General,  59,  128,  130,  132, 

155.  162 
Angellier,  308,  309 
Anti-Christianity,     21,     39     seq., 

64  seq.,  90  seq.,  185,  210  seq. 

—  and  education,  92  seq. 
Anti-Clericalism,  90  seq.     See  pp. 

30.91,96 

Antoine,  237 

Aquinas,  Saint  Thomas,  182 

Armee  et  Democratie,  132 

VArt  pour  Vart,  26 

Asia  Minor,  126 

Association  Law,  the,  iii,  119 

Assumptionists,  iii,  112,  118 

Audoux,  Marguerite,  315 

Augier,  103 

Aulard,  178,  181,  252,  274 

Austria,   past   and   present   diffi- 
culties of,  7,  8,  47 

—  and  Prussia,  23,  24,  44 
Aviation,  161,  259 


B 


Baden,  23 
Baltic,  the,  146 


Balzac,  300,  310,  313,  322,  325 

Barbusse,  309 

Barrfes,    Maurice,    74,    169,    182, 

190  seq.,20^,  243,  245,  246,  274, 

285,  304,  306,  321,  322,   325, 

368 
Barthou,  168,  169,  204,  207,  208, 

217,  282,  343,  344,  346,  361,  383 
Bataille,  219,  229,  231 
Batiffol,  Abb^,  285 
Baudelaire,  64 
Baumann,  A.,  321 
Bazalgette,  134 
Bazin,  Ren4,  120,  285,  321 
Beaunier,  Andre,  320 
Bebel,  136 
Belgium,  44,  84,   194,  355,  366, 

385 
Bellomayre,  de,  294 
Benda,  320 
Benedictines,  112 
Benoist,  Charles,  362 
B^renger,  202 
Bergson,  Henri,  14,  249,  280,  325 

seq. 
Berkeley,  328,  329 
Berlin,  146 
Bernard,  Tristan,  320 
Bernstein,  229,  231,  234,  254 
Bert,  Paul,  91,  277 
Berteaux,  162 
Berthelot,  183,  202 
Bertrand,  L.,  315 
Beyrout,  122,  211 
Beyrout  University,  282 
Biarritz,  23 
Binet-Valmer,  315 
Bismarck,  10,  23,  24,  49,  50,  54, 

55,  64,  70,  72,  73,  75,  85,  168, 

261,  387.  389 
Bjomson,  305 

Blanc,  Louis,  20,  87,  194,  195 
Blondel,  Dr.  Raoul,  331 
Bocquet,  309 


391 


392 


Index 


Bodley,   J.   E.   C:    France,    104; 

Cardinal    Manning    and    Other 

Essays,  260 
Bois,  Jules,  309 
Bolingbroke,  263 
Bonald,  de,  53,  176 
Bonnard,  309 
Bordeaux,  7 

Bordeaux,  Henri,  285,  321 
Bornier,  Gaston  de,  235 
Bossuet,  280,  299,  300 
Bouh^lier,  Saint  Georges  de,  311 
Boulanger,  72,  85,  352 
Boulenger,  Marcel,  319 
Bourgeois,  Ldon,  96,  109,  144,  154 
Bourges,  313 
Bourget,  Paul,  13,  17,  182,  187, 

226,   244,   246,   247,   250,   253, 

274,   282,   304,   305,   306,   321, 

322,  325 
Bourse  du  Travail,  216,  217,  357 
Boylesve,  Rene,  320 
Boy  Scouts,  the,  264,  265 
Briand,  165,   168,  169,  204,  216, 

343,  346 
Brieux,  224-225,  228 
Brisson,  91 
Brittany,  263 
Broglie,  Due  de,  56,  170,  177,  181, 

536 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  307 
Bronte,  Emily,  17 
Bruneti^re,    184,    186,    187,   275, 

280,  304 
Brunot,  Ferdinand,  141 
Buddhism,  245,  246 
Budget,  the,  61 
Bugeaud,  352 
Buisson,  164 
Buloz,  275 


Cabinet,  the,  59  seq.,  115 

Caesar,  Julius,  153 

Caillard,  309 

Caillaux,  207,  344,  345,  357,  384 

Caillaux,  Madame,  384 

Capus,  235,  274 

Carlyle,  272 

Camot,  Sadi,  59 

Catholicism,  under  the  Second 
Empire,  12,  13,  30  seq.,  288; 
and  Humanitarianism,  19;  un- 
der the  Third  Republic,  63  seq.^ 


90  seq.,  108  seq.,  1 18  seq.,  255, 
273  seq.,  288  seq.;  and  Theism, 
93  seq.;  and  Dreyfusism,  108 
seq.',  and Combism,  118  seq.;  and 
Liberalism,  177  seq.,  293;  and 
the  new  France,  273  seq.;  dis- 
appearance of  hostility  to,  273 
seq.,  285  seq.;  activities  of  the 
Church,  283  seq.,  287  seq.;  293 
seq.',  present  status  of  the 
Church,  287  seq.',  difficulties  of, 
294  seq. ;  prospects  of,  296 

Cavallera,  Abb6,  285 

Cavour,  9 

Celsus,  32 

Challemel-Lacour,  91 

ChMons,  39 

Chamber  of  Deputies,  55  seq.,  70, 
86,  87,  88,  89,  115,  163  seq., 
213  seq.,  346  seq.;  Speaker  of ,  60; 
dangers  from,  63  seq.,  349  seq. 

Chambord,  Comte  de,  90 

Champagne,  263 

Charleroi,  battle  of,  385 

Charies  V,  48 

Charles  X,  19,  353 

Chateaubriand,  A.  de,  320 

Chateaubriand,  Le  Vte.  F.  R.  de, 

19,  33,  175 
Chebli,  Monsignor,  282 
Chesterfield,  299 
Chislehurst,  13 
Christian  Brothers,  the,  112 
Christianity,  Renan  and  validity 

of,    17;   and   Humanitarianism, 

20,64 
Clam,  du  Paty  de,  342 
Claudel,  282,  285,  308,  310 
Clemenceau,  60,  91,  123,  144,  147, 

164,    167,    168,    181,   202,    207, 

216,  275,,350,  352,  357,  386 
Clermont,  Emile,  320 
Cochin,  Denys,  96,  122 
Colbert,  37 
Colette,  Mme.,  315 
College  de  France,  the,  34 
Colonial  policy,  63,  75  seq.,  100 
Combes.     See  Combism. 
Combism,  62,  81,  95,  96,  98,  105, 

106,    113    seq.,   155,    277,    281, 

passim 
Commune,  the,  50,  64,  177,    178, 

183,  347,  381 
Compifegne,  23,  268 
Comte,  II,  32 


Index 


393 


Concordat,  the,  98,  123  seq.,  288 

Condamin,  Abb^,  285 

Condillac,  14 

Condorcet,  185 

Congo,  76,  171 

Conseil  de  revision,  87 

Constantinople,  122 

Council  of  State,  61 

Cour  d'Appel,  87 

Courier,  Paul-Louis,  32 

Courteline,  232 

Cousin,  II,  14,  93,  94 

Craven,  Mrs.,  87 

Crimea,  10,  39 

Croiset,  333 

Curel,  Francois  de,  237  seq.y  242 


D 


Dante,  301,  308 

Danton,  181 

Darwin,  14 

Daudet,  L4on,  189,  313 

Dauphin^,  263 

Decadents,  the,  306  seq.,  310,  317, 

319 

Delcass^,  59,  78,  80-81,  89,  124, 

136,  144  seq.,  154,  163 
Deloncle,  Frangois,  210 
Democracy,  meaning  of,  364  seq. 
Demolins,  139 
Denmark,  44,  46 
DeroulMe,  Paul,  74,  188,  252 
Descartes,  185,  327 
Descaves,  226,  3i3»  3i5 
Desjardins,  Paul,  205,  246 
Dhorme,  Abb6,  285 
Dickens,  15,  310,  320 
Diderot,  26,  140,  301 
Donnay,  103,  232  seq.,  257 
Donnersmarck,  Henckel  von,  73 
Dostoievsky,  305,  315 
Doumergue,   167,   169,  205,  281, 

344 
Dreyfus.     See  Dreyfusism 
Dreyfusism,  81,  95,  105  seq.,  114 

seq.,    127-129,    162,    183,    248, 

263,  323,  passim 
Drumont,  Edouard,  106,  107,  188, 

189,  245 
Duchesne,  Monseigneur,  33 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  the  Younger, 

222,  241,  305 
Dupanloup,  Bishop,  177,  28J. 
Dupuy,  105,  108,  109 


E 


5^BRAY,  A.,  81 

5^cole  Centrale,  139,  331 
Ecole  Poly  technique,  139,  196, 

331 
Elder,  315 
Eliot,  George,  310 
Encyclopaedists,   11,  36,  41,  261, 

277,  389 
England,  84,  92,  97,  167,  206,  217, 

258,    365,   366;   change   in,    i., 

former  rival  to  France,  7;  and 

Denmark,  44;  and  Prussia,  44; 

relations  with  Third  Republic, 

82,  146,  385,  387 

—  literature,  299,  300,  307 
Entente  Cordiale,  168 
d'Esparb^s,  316 

d'Estournelles  de  Constant,  154 
Ethics,  indifference  to  significance 

of,  16-19,  186 
Ethics,      connection     with      the 

Church,  96,  97,  98,  295,  377 
Evremond,  277 
Exhibition  of  1867,  10 


Faguet,  60,  182,  183,  247 

Falli^res,  59,  166,  344 

Farrfere,  Claude,  316 

Fashoda,  80,  105 

Faure,  F^lix,  58 

Favre,  Jules,  83 

Fenelon,  269 

Ferry,  66,  75,  77,  91,  93,  94,  95, 

100,  277 
Fez,  154 

Finance,  Ministry  of,  60 
First  Empire,  19,  157 
Flanders,  263 

Flaubert,  28,  29,  64,  302,  313 
Floquet,  85 
Fontenelle,  277 
Foreign  Affairs,  Ministry  of,  59, 

60,  78,  81-83,  136 
Foreign  Alliances,  78  seq. 
Fort,  Paul,  308,  309 
Fouill^e,  94 
France,  Anatole,  32,  137,  173,  213, 

261,274,304,305,306,  318,319. 

321,  322,  325.  333 
France,  La,  qui  Meurt,  81 
France,  present,  i,  3,  8,  158  seq. 


394 


Index 


France — Continued 

298  seq.,  334  seq.,  373  seq.,  381 
seq.,  in  1852,1,  8;  1870,  21,  49- 
5i»  137.  381;  demoralization  of 
ideas,  11,  381,  passim;  depopu- 
lation of,  37,  76,  103,  218; 
Prussia,  1868,  43  seq.;  constitu- 
tion, 52  seq.,  82,  86,  100,  147, 
347  seq.,  363  seq.,  383;  incoher- 
ence, 60;  President,  the,  54  seq., 
166, 345 ;  commerce,  75, 100,206; 
education,  84,  91  seq.,  iii,  129, 
135.  137  ^^?M  249  seq.;  education 
and  the  Classics,  230  seq.;  news- 
papers, 170  seq.,  -202,  206,  275, 
310;  European  view  of,  260 
seq.;  national  French  character, 
262  seq.,  298  seq.,  306;  influence 
of  modem  civilization  on,  266 
seq.;  foreign  fashions,  267  seq.; 
need  of  strong  man  for  future 
of,  348  seq.;  need  of  stronger 
institutions, 3885^3.;  Coup  d'etat, 
likelihood  of,  356  seq.;  the  war  of 
1914,  381  seq.;  present  temperof , 
384  seq. 

Frankfort  Treaty,  the,  50,  76,  79 

Frapi6,  315 

Freemasons,  92  seq.,  99,  113,  123, 
131,  277 

Freppel,  Bishop,  85 

Fresnois,  Andr^  du,  318 

Freycinet,  de,  89,  105,  128 

Fromentin,  320 

Fustel  de  Coulanges,  193 


Gachons,  J.  des,  320 

Gallicans,  the,  124 

Gallieni,  128 

Gallifet,  General  de,  127,  128 

Gambetta,  55,  56,  64,  66,  69  seq., 

79,  83,  88,  90,  91,  126,  168,  210, 

251,277 
Gamier,  Ch.  M.,  315 
Gautier,  Madame  Judith,  313 
Gautier,  Th^ophile,  26,  27 
Gaulois,  Le,  84 
Gay,  Monseigneur,  284 
Geffroy,  313.  3i5 
German  professors,  157 
Germany,  97,  103,  104,  126,  136, 

145,  194,  217,  355,  365;  present 

change  in,    i,   2;  formerly  an 


idea,  7,  8,  50;  and  Napoleon 
III,    10;   defeats  France,  1870, 

21,  50;  civilization  of,  its  appeal, 

22,  23,  40,  41,  80,  135,  212;  sup- 
posed peacefulness  of,  22,  23, 
24,  40,  46;  deference  to,  24, 
268;  commercial  expansion  of, 
75.  350;  relations  with  Third 
Republic,  79  seq.,  136  seq.,  146 
^^9-»  350;  the  present  war,  385 
seq. 

Gide,  A.,  320 

Giraudoux,  Jean,  320 

Gobineau,  253 

Goblet,  Ren^,  85 

Goethe,  308 

Gohier,  Urbain,  276 

Goncourts,  the,  15,  26,  27,  29,  302, 

^  305,  313,  314 
Gourmont,  Rdmy  de,  134 
Grandmaison,  Abb^  de,  285 
Gr^vy,  70,  88,  342,  349,  350 
Grey,  Sir  Edward,  264 
Gu^rin,  Charles,  308,  309 
Guesde,  197 
Guillain,  331 
Guizot,  36 
Guyau,  14 

Gyp   (Madame  de  Martel),   103, 
232,  257 


H 


Haeckel,  14,  275 

Hal^vy,  Daniel,  36,  117 

Hamp,  315 

Hanotaux,  59,  78-81,  89,  100,  275 

Harduin,  276 

Haussmann,  10 

Hegel,  23 

Hennique,  313,  3^5 

Henry,    Lieutenant-Colonel,    108, 

127 
Herder,  22 
H^redia,  26 
Hermant,  Abel,  232 
Harold,  134 
Herriot,  203 
Hervieu,  223,  224,  275 
Hirsch,3i5 
Holland,  47 
Homer,  308 
Hugo,  Victor,  19,  20,  21,  159,  300, 

303,  305.  307,  309-31 1,  3 1 7, 322, 

324»  325,  354 


Index 


395 


Huguenots,  the,  37 
Humanitarianism,  19  seq.,  64  seq. 
207,  212 


Ibsen,  222,  241,  305 

Idealism,  28;  revival  of,  187,  199, 
304  seq. 

Imperialists,  54,  90 

Income  Tax,  61,  67 

Indo-China,  76 

Internationalists,  21,  135,  252;  re- 
action against,  187  seq. 

Italy,  84,  97,  103,  126,  176,  350, 
365;  change  in,  2;  former  posi- 
tion, 8;  and  Napoleon  III,  9, 
12,  39,  78;  and  the  Third  Re- 
public, 75,  104 


JACLARD,  34 

Jacquier,  Abb6,  285 

Jaloux,  320 

James,  William,  256,  280 

Jammes,  Francis,  282,  285,  308- 

310 
Jansenists,  the,  198 
Japan,  77 
Jur^s,  Jean,  88,  109,  113  seq.,  123, 

127  seq.,  136,  140,  144,  155,  159, 

161,  166,  169,  194,  195,  197,  203, 

208,  246,  249 
Jeanne  d'Arc,  137,  193,  377;  feast 

of,  282 
Jerusalem,  211 
Jesuits,   91,    no.    III,    112,    118, 

278,  282,  293 
Jews,  the,  103,  106  seq.,   188  seq. 
Joubert,  233 
Joufifroy,  12,  32 


Kaiser,  the,  145,  146,  153,  158 
Kant,  14,  328 
Keller,  Colonel,  294 
Kiel,  Canal,  79 
Kipling,  261 


Labiche,  36 
La  Bruy^re,  269 


Lacordaire,  P^re,  177 

Lafon,  320 

La  Fontaine,  134 

La  Ferronnays,  Mile.,  87 

Lagrange,  Abb^,  285 

Lajeunesse,  Ernest,  246 

Lamartine,  19,  20,  87,  176,  307, 
309,  310 

Lamennais,  19,  20,  21 

Lamorici^re,  352 

Lanessan,  de,  347 

Langlois,  135 

Lanson,  141,  333 

Larbaud,  320 

Larroque,  Patrice,  32 

Lasies,  128 

Latini,  Brunetto,  137 

Lavedan,  103,  232  seq.^  241,  243, 
257,  274 

Lavisse,  275 

Lebel,  85 

Leblond  Brothers,  the,  315 

Le  Bon,  Gustave,  256 

Lebreton,  Ahh6,  285 

Lechevallier,  331 

Leconte  de  Lisle,  25 

Lee,  Vernon,  205 

Lef4vre,  Andr6,  132,  202,  346 

Legitimists,  54 

Lemaitre,  Jules,  139,  182,  183, 
184,   243,  247,  274,  305,  318 

Lemire,  Abbe,  279 

Leo  XIII,  Pope,  91,  96,  lOO,  177, 
194,  245,  279,  294 

Len^ru,  Mademoiselle,  236 

Lendtre,  181,  236 

Leroy-Beaulieu,  194 

Lesage,  316 

Leygues,  210 

Lhomond,  94 

Liberalism,  177 

Libermann,  P^re,  284 

Literature,  under  Second  Empire, 
24  seq.,  38;  under  the  Third 
Republic,  103,  190  seq.,  212 
seq.,  220  seq.;  present  transfor- 
mation of,  298  seq.;  foreign 
influences,  304  seq.;  poetry, 
307  seq. 

Littr^,  14 

Loire,  the,  69 

Lorin,  194 

Lorraine,  263 

Loti,  198,  253,  301,  306,  321,  322 

Loubet,  59,  113 


396 


Index 


Louis  XII,  206 

Louis  XIV,  7,  48,  133,  262,  288 

Louis  XV,  170,  206,  268 

Louis  XVI,  12 

Louis  XVIII,  19,  353 

Louis    Philippe,    12,    19,    36,    50, 

88,  206,  277,  288,  352 
Louys,  Pierre,  319 
Lucretius,  32 
Lun^ville,  160 
Lyautey,  General,  161,  352 
Lycees,  the,  12,  30,  142 


M 


MacMahon,   55,  59,   70,  89,  90, 

163,  170 
Madagascar,  76 
Madame  Bovary,  28 
Madelin,  181 
Maeterlinck,  222 
Maistre,  Joseph  de,  21,  43,  176 
Mallarm6,  307 
Marat,  181 
Marivaux,  233 
Marrast,  Armand,  87 
Marryat,  Captain,  223 
Marchand,  72,  79,  352 
Mardrus,  Lucie,  309 
Margueritte,  Paul,  313,  315 
Massis,  255,  256 
Materialism,     14     seq.;     reaction 

against,  186  seq. 
Maupassant,  233 
Mauriac,  309,  320 
Maurras,  53,  366-369 
Mediterranean,  the,  48 
Meilhac,  36 

M^line,  100,  105,  109,  169,  343 
Merc^dfes,  Sister,  292 
Mercier,  309 

Mercure  de  France,  The,  134 
M^rim^e,  32 

Mesnil,  Edmond  du,  202,  347 
Messimy,  162 
Metz,  70,  146 
Mexico,  10,  39 
Michelet,  Abb6,  285 
Michelet,  Jules,  11,  19,  20,  21,  22, 

32,  I37»  159,  213,  300,  324,  325, 

354 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  14 
Millerand,  59.  92,  109,  114,  130, 

162,  346 


Miomandre,  320 
Mirbeau,  226,  313,  315 
Modernism,  280,  292,  293 
Moli^re,  267,  313,  316 
Moltke,  von,  49,  72 
Monarchism,   present  growth  of, 

352  seq.,  366  seq. 
Monod,  135,  252 
Montaigne,  267 
Montalembert,  Comte  de,  177 
Montesquieu,  320 
Montfort,  316 
Morals,  decadence  of,  35-38,  52, 

loi,  218,  219 

—  higher  standard  of,  217   seq., 
255,  373  seq. 

—  and  the  stage,  220  seq. 
Morocco,  76,  126,  145,  158,  161 

—  Sultan  of,  146 
Moselly,  315 
Mozart,  327 

Mun,  Comte  de,  84,  122,  194,  381 
Musset,  307-308,  309,  310 


N 


Nancy,  146 

Napoleon  I,  7,  22,  48,  72,  93,  107, 
175,  288,  306,  352,  387 

Napoleon  III,  at  Bordeaux,  7,  50; 
and  Italy,  9,  10,  78;  an  ideahst, 
9,  37;  and  Prussia,  9,  10,  43  seq.; 
character  of  reign  of,  see  Second 
Empire;  religious  attitude  of, 
12, 13,  30,  31, 93;  and  commerce, 
36,  37.  38;  his  Court,  37;  his 
army,  10,  39;  misgivings  of,  42 

Napoleon,  Prince  Jerome,  12 

Napoleon,  Prince  Victor,  359,  360 

National  Assembly,  13,  53,  55,  56, 
62,  63,  65,  68,  70,  347 

Nationalism,  188  seq. 

Naturalism,  15,  loi,  187,  199, 
300,  302-304,  305,  316,  323 

Nau,  J.  A.,  315 

Navy,  Ministry  of,  60,  61,  77,  80, 
81 

N^grier,  General  de,  145 

Nesmy,  320 

Nietzsche,  306 

Nietzscheism,  246 

Nineteenth  Century,  The;  May, 
1907,  167 

Noailles,  Comtesse  de,  307-310 

Normandy,  263 


Index 


397 


Olier,  284 

Orleanists,  54,  90 
Orleans,  Duke  of,  359-360 


PaIva,  La,  73 

Pams,  342,  343,  357 

Panama  Affair,  the,  88,  165,  188, 

189 
Paris,  21,  23,  37,  49,  III,  164,  260, 

263,  356,  385 
Paris  Medical  School,  14 
Parnassian   School,    the,   25,    26, 

308,  309 
Pascal,  299 
Pasteur,  328 
Pataud,  216 
Paul-Boncour,  203 
Pdguy,  117,  246,  282 
Pelletan,  Admiral,  132,  155 
Pelloutier,  Fernand,  195,  215 
Pergaud,  315 
P6rigueux,  344 
Persigny,  de,  24,  39 
Philip  II,  48 
Philippe,  Ch.  M.,  315 
Picard,  Hdfene,  309 
Picquart,  General,  252 
Pius  VI,  288 
Pius  IX,  176,  177 
Pius  X,  124,  177,  279,  289,  292, 

293 

Plato,  328 

Poincar6,  Henri,  196 

Poincare,  President,  54,  57,  89,  96, 

109,    166,    168,    169,    204,   207, 

214,    215,    341-348,    352i    357, 

360,  361,  383 
Poland,  385 
Porch^,  309 
Port-Royal,  32 
Porto-Riche,  de,  229-231 
Portugal,  47 
Posen,  44 
Pottecher,  309 
Prat,  Abb^,  285 
Prevost,  Marcel,  387 
Pr^vost-Paradol,  La  France  Nou- 

velle,  15,  42-49,  75 
Prime  Minister,  54,  58  seq.,  165 
Protestantism,  23,  31,  96,  189 
Provence,  263 


Prudhomme,  Sully,  308 

Prussia,  former  poverty  of,  7; 
militarism,  22,  24,  157;  and 
German  unity,  44,  45,  50 

Psichari,  Lieutenant  Ernest,  254 

Psichari,  J.,  282,  321 

Puvis  de  Chavannes,  187 

Pyrenees,  the,  48 


Q 


QuARR  Abbey,  112 

Quarterly  Review,  The;  Oct.  JQliy 

73 
Quinet,  11,  19,  22,  32 


Rabelais,  137 

Racine,  229,  230,  299,  307,  308 

Railways,  nationalization  of,  68 

Ranc,  91 

Rauh,  Fr^d^ric,  135 

Realism,  28,   29,    186,  236,  313, 

316 
R6gnier,  Henri  de,  307,  309,  319 
Reid,  16 
Renan,  15,  17,  18,  19,  22,  31,  33, 

34,  40,  41,  56,  64,  65,  91,  114, 

133,    183,    185,    199,   246,   249, 

254,   261,   272,   274,   330,  368, 

381 ;  Vie  de  Jesus,  33-35 
Renard,  Jules,  134 
Rennes,  iii,  127 
Republicanism,  20-22,  40,  52  seq., 

64,  71,  72,  83,  84,  96 
Revanche,  the,  69  seq.,  75, 104, 247, 

271 
Revolution,  the,  11,  19,  157,  174, 

175,  176,  178;  reaction  against, 

17$  seq. 
Revolutions   of    1830   and   1848, 

the,  177 
Rhine,  the,  44 
Ribot,  58,  207,  214 
Richepin,  275 
Rivoire,  309 
Robespierre,  181,  212 
Rolland,  Romain,  213,  321-323 
Rollin,  140 
Romanticists,    19,    25,    300-302, 

303,  316  seq. 
Roon,  von,  49 
Rosny   Brothers,    the,    313,    315, 

316 


398 


Index 


Rostand,  235 

Roupnel,  315 

Rousseau,  11,  41,  94,  179  seq.^ 
I99»  269,  324 

Rouvier,  144,  145,  154,  164,  167, 
352 

Royalists,  19 

Royer-Collard,  16 

Russia,  past  remoteness,  7;  posi- 
tion in  18^0,  45;  alliance  with, 
^^93,  79,  82,  100,  104,  387; 
change  in,  99;  literary  influence 
of,  305,  306 


S 


Saint-Auban,  de,  220 

Saint-Front,  Church  of,  344 

Sainte-Beuve,  12,  25,  32 

St.  Cyr,  252 

Salon,  the,  36 

Saltet,  Abbe,  285 

Sand,  George,  19,  300,  305 

Sans-culottes,  the,  87 

Sardou,  235 

Savignon,  315 

Scandinavia,     84,     355;     literary 

influence  of,  305,  306 
Scheurer-Kestner,  70 
Schleswig,  44 
Schnoebele,  85 
Science,  17,  25,  94,  97,  loi,  126; 

present    reaction    against,    184 

seq.,  305 
Second  Empire,  characteristics  of, 

9,   10,   II,   12,   13,  36-43,  268, 

277,  299,  387;  sources  of  weak- 
ness, 48 
Seignobos,  135,  252 
Seine,  the,  48 
Sembat,  208-213,  347,  363 
Senate,  57  seq. 
Separation    Law,    the,    125    seq., 

153,  210,  289,  292 
Shakespeare,  301,  307,  308 
Shelley,  299,  307 
Sisters  of  Charity,  the,  112 
Steele,  Le,  32 
Simon,  Jules,  83,  93,  204 
Socialism,  19,  20,  21,  56,  109  seq., 

130,  216,  369;  reaction  again::'., 

193,  194,  248 
Sorbonne,  24,  134,  135,  140,  141, 

143 


Sorel,  Georges,  22,  181,  196  seq., 

334 
Soudan,  76 
Spain,  126 

Spinoza,  14,  328,  329 
Spiritualism,  94,  95 
Sports,  popularity  of,  258  seq. 
Spuller,  105 

Stael,  Madame  de,  22,  336  seq. 
Stage,  the,  220  seq. 
Stendhal,  32,  253 
Strasbourg,  23,  69,  76 
Sulpitians,  the,  112 
Syndicalism,    21,    155,    157,    164, 

195  seq.,  215  seq.,  248 
Syveton,  128 


Tagus,  the,  47 

Taine,  14,  15,  16,  17,  22,  25,  32,  40, 
42,  56,  64,  65,  94,  114,  133,  178, 
180  seq.,  199,  247,  249,  272,  287, 

294,  303,  329,  334.  381, 

Tangier,  ipo5,  3,65,  145,  151,  seq., 
passim 

Tarde,  255,  256 

Tennyson,  309 

Tharaud  brothers,  the,  319,  320 

Thiers,  13,  49,  53,  54,  55,  59,  89, 
178,  336,  347,  363 

Third  Republic,  influence  of  Sec- 
ond Empire,  13,  35,  41,  52, 
64;  sources  of  deterioration  of 
France  under,  52  seq.,  97,  180, 
262  seq.;  before  J8/S,  54-56; 
1876-J8Q8,  56  seq.;  pacificist 
character  of,  695^2.,  82, 102, 129, 
154;  1898-1905,  105  seq.;  and 
the  army,  107  seq.,  126  seq.;  and 
the  navy,  132;  its  patriot- 
ism, 133  seq.,  252;  the  younger 
generation,  244  seq.;  is  it  less 
French?,  260;  after  1905,  151 
seq.;  military  spirit,  159,  seq., 
352  seq.;  sources  of  improve- 
ment, 157,  171,  172,  175.  187; 
patriotism  widespread,  201  seq., 
385  seq.;  wider  outlook,  205, 
seq.,  381  seq.;  relations  with 
Germany, 79  seq.,  350;  degrada- 
tion of  politics,  83  seq.,  98;  de- 
basement of  public  spirit,  97  seq. 

Tinayre,  Marcelle,  320 


Index 


399 


Tirard  and  Rouvier,  88 
Tixeront,  Ahh6,  285 
Tocqueville,  de,  53,  177 
Tolstoi,  255,  305,  310 
Tolstoism,  246 
Tonkin,  76 
Toul,  160 
Toulouse,  in 
Touraine,  263 
Touzard,  Ahh6,  285 
Tubingen  School,  the,  23 
Tunis,  76,  171 
Turkey,  45,  99 

U 

United  States  of  America,  the, 
54.  57,  77,  91,  103,  366 


Vallery-Radot,  309,  320 

Variot,  321 

Vatican,  the,  122  seq.,  210 
Vaugeois,  Henri,  189 
Vautel,  276 
V6drines,  161 
Venezelos,  264 
Verdun,  160 
Verhaeren,  308 
Verlaine,  306,  354 
Versailles,  41,  64,  76,  268 


Veuillot,  Francois,  220,  285 

Vi^l^-Griffin,  308,  309 

Vigny,  307,  310 

Villon,  300,  308 

Vincent,  Ahh6,  285 

Viollis,  320 

Viviani,  205,  208 

Vogu6,  Melchior  de,  187,  304 

Voltaire,  32,  33,  91,  133,  137,  185, 

301,  317,  320,  324 
Voltairianism,  31 
Voisins,  G.  de,  320 

W 

Wagner,  23,  306 
Waldeck-Rousseau,  105,  109  seg., 

118  seq.,  127 
Wallace,  Sir  Richard,  299 
Walpole,  Horace,  268,  299 
War  Office,  59,  60,  81,  128 
Washington,  43,  61 
Weiss,  J.  J.,  140,  220 
Werth,  315 
Whitman,  256 
Wilson,  88,  349 
Wilson,  President  Woodrow,  361 


Zola,  15,  173,  187,  222,  302-303, 
313,  314.  316,  321,  322 


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